Notes on The Gifts of the Jews – Chapter Four: Sinai: From Death to Life
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The story of the Exodus does not belong to history proper, but to prehistoric lore of a minor,
unimportant Semite tribe that had not yet learned to read and write.
A majority of scholars have assumed that Israel escaped from Egypt in the reign of Rameses II,
but there are no historical records to back this up.
Story of the Red Sea? We know that Rameses II did not drown, but died in his bed.
Could the Exodus be a story like Gilgamesh? The anonymous authors of Gilgamesh tell their
story in the manner of a myth – there is no attempt to convince us the story is real or ever took
place in historical time. At one point, we are reminded that the action of the epic is taking place
“once upon a time” in a pristine Golden Age. It happened outside time. For all ancients, except
the Jews, time as we think of it was unreal; the Real was the heavenly and archetypal.
According to the Jewish perception – the exact opposite is true – earthly time is real whereas
eternity is the end of time (or an illusion).
Exodus story – Bible full of clues that the authors were attempting to write a historical narrative
they had received from oral culture in two or three variant forms. There is concreteness of
detail and a concern to get things right. God spoke to Avraham and told him to leave Sumer for
the unknown; God spoke to Moshe and told him to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. These are
events, not archetypal tales with a moral at the end. The Jewish people and Christians and
Muslims rely on the FACT that God commissioned Avraham and Moshe to do what they did.
Enormous value shift here. Reality for Sumerians – the Eternal; reality for the Jews – the here
and now. In other cultures, the wise man looked for the predictable, the repeatable, the
archetypal, the eternal. One came to inner peace by coming to term with the Wheel of Life. In
Sumer, all inventions came from the gods – if the beer was good, it was because of the goddess
who oversaw beer-making.
The Israelites were the first people to live psychologically in real time. They were the first
people to value the New and to welcome Surprise and in so doing radically subverted all other
ancient worldviews. In telling the story of the Israelites, we are telling their life stories, a
chronicle of real events.
Historical fact: The name Moshe (Moses) is actually Egyptian, not Hebrew. Incident of the
“blood bridegroom” which presents God in such an odd light, is not whitewashed. Real
achievement of Torah – mankind’s first attempt to write history – a history that mattered
because man’s whole identity was bound up in it.
For Jews, the moral is not that history repeats itself, but that history is always something new
unfolding through time whose direction and end we cannot know except through hints from
God. The future is unknowable and cannot be discovered through auguries. Man does not
control the future. In a profound sense, even God does not control the future: it is the
collective responsibility of those who are bringing about the future by their actions in the
present. The future hold promise – we are not doomed – not bound to some predetermined
fate. We are liberated like the Israelites who crossed the Red Sea.
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Journey from personal journey of Avraham to the corporate journey of the Israelites. Journey
from a patronal, household god that one carries for good luck to YHWH, the God of gods. Jews
do not adore the past or bow before the future, but stand in the present moment.
Escaping Israelites in the desert of Sinai, one of the planet’s most desolate places. The desert
brings not death, but epiphany – the most terrifying one of the Bible. Wilderness of Syn –
Israelites complain – no water, no food. God provides food, water, and mahn-hu.
Jethro tells his son-in-law – You can’t do this alone. Moshe ascends the terrible Mountain. Early
rabbits in their MIDRASH (or commentary) note that YHWH adopts the posture of a suitor who
woos a demanding woman. He explains to Moshe how he values him and how exalted their life
will be together.
Moshe is the only man worthy to face YHWH – ascends into the fiery fog. Ten commandments:
o 1) I am God who freed you from bondage
o 2) Serve no other gods before me
o 3) worship no carved images
o 4) Do not take God’s name for emptiness (your own agendas?)
o 5) Keep the Sabbath sacred
o 6) Honor your parents
o 7) Do not murder
o 8) Do not adulter
o 9) Do not steal
o 9) Do not perjure (bear false witness or lie)
o 10) Do not covet what others have .
A variant of these Ten Commandments appears in Deuteronomy 5:6-22. The original of the
Exodus commandments may have literally been 10 words corresponding to the 10 fingers on the
hands.
No documents in all of literature like the Ten Commandments. Not given in a legal framework
or as worldly advice. Human beings for the first and last time are being offered a code without
justification. [Story of the “Blue Cross” – “Reason and justice grip the remotest and loneliest
star.” – “On plains of opal, under cliffs cut out of pearl, you would still find a notice-board: ‘Thou
shalt not steal.’” Simple commandment that cannot be argued away or set aside for special
circumstances. They are not suggestions or challenges. “They are always there in the inner core
of a person.” There is nothing to add or subtract. If mankind were to keep these
Commandments, the world would be entirely different, but man cannot manage to keep these
ten.
Jewish Sabbath (“Ceasing”) – first day of rest in ancient society. Day of prayer, study, recreation
(re-creation). In this Talmud (study), we have the beginnings of “the universal duty of
continuous self-education” --said Nahum Sarna. Israel was the first society to value education
and the first to see it as a universal pursuit for all – that must be safeguard by those in power for
those in their employ. Leisure is necessary and appropriate for a free people; it is necessary for
creativity. Free people are free to imitate the creativity of God.
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Ten Commandments = codification of Abraham’s covenant of blood, of which circumcision is the
outward sign. The Commandments are the invisible sign of the covenant – circumcision of the
heart. God will be their God if they will be his people and keep his commandments – very much
like a marriage. Abrahams pledge to King/God.
Codification of Abrahamic HENOTHEISM (that one God is to be worshipped, though other gods
are presumed to exist). Oughtness (Kant’s “categorical imperative”). All the past leads up to this
moment; future unknown. Past – regret; Future – anxiety. To live in real time, to live in history
can be horrible. The Wheel of time leads to the peace of death.
The Commandments allow man to live in the here and now. In this moment, I am in control.
This moment I can choose what I will do – murder or not – steal or not – lie or not. If I keep the
Commandments, I can achieve true peace – not the peace of death. “In choosing what is right, I
am never more alive.”
The Israelites tended to give their God a human personality. A jealous god.
Israel’s interpretation of “Do not murder” includes an obligation in justice to the HAVE-NOTS.
The most hotly debated commandment.
Afterlife? Long life is promised to those who take care of their parents. Eternal life is promised
to none. In the Ten Commandments, virtue is its own reward. “I must obey these commands
because they must be obeyed.”
But prohibitions provoke an urge to sin, so Israelites immediately regress and worship a
“molten calf” they have made and give in to “reveling.” YWHW = invisible god who stands on
the bull as his footstool. Israelites mistake YHWH for his creation and in so doing end up
breaking all the commandments.
God, enraged asks Moshe’s leave to destroy the “stiff-necked” people. Moshe argues with God;
he reminds God of His promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Israel. God (rather bullish here; an angry
storm god – not the purer understanding of God that will come.) Stiff-necked view of Jews, who
serve an unforgiving God, leads to anti-Semitism. Cahill (pp. 152-153): “The hatred of Christians
for Jews may have its ultimate source in the hatred of God, a hatred that the hater must
carefully keep himself from knowing about. Why would one hate God? To find the answer we
probably need look no further than the stark, unyielding Ten.”
Following the Commandments comes an “interminable” series of prescriptions with fill the rest
of the Torah, but those did not come from Sinai. These have been “shoehorned” in.
o One prescription, called the lex talionis or the “law of retaliation”: “an eye for an eye,”
“a tooth for a tooth,” “hand for hand,” “foot for foot.” Reputation of the harshness of
Old Testament morality comes from its commonality with the laws of Sumer: the lex
talionis appears in the Code of Hammurabi from Sumer, not from the revelation from
Sinai.
o Other problematic prescriptions: “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” and
commandments in Leviticus to execute homosexuals and burn alive perpetrators of
incest AND their victims.
o These are all from the common law of the ancient Middle East, which gave rights to the
nobility and virtually no rights to the lower classes.
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But in the prescriptions of Jewish law, there is a presumption that all people, even
slaves, are human, and that all human life is sacred. The Jewish bias is not in favor of
the powerful with their possessions but is in favor of the powerless in their poverty.
“You were strangers (sojouners) in Egypt so “a stranger you are not to oppress: you
yourselves know the feelings of the stranger.” Golden rule here.
o Hebrew bias toward the underdog is unique in the whole history of law. Insofar as our
system of justice operates at all, it is still a Jewish sense of justice.
Traditions of the Jews – many laws of the prescriptions that serve as basis for the halakha – the
body of Jewish prescriptive law – have grown in time and been expanded in the Mishna – the
early rabbinic law code of the late 2nd century CE. These laws have never entered mainstream
Western consciousness.
Endless legal refinements of Jewish law – referred to as Talmudic – connotation of
“differentiating to the point of absurdity.” Orthodox Jews still adhere to these laws.
Sumerians, Egyptians, and Greeks saw demands of law and the demands of wisdom as separate
realms. Jews see all of life coming from God, the Author of life – which was to be governed by a
single outlook in which the material and spiritual, the intellectual and the moral, were one.
The great formula of the Jews is not that there is ONE GOD, but that GOD IS ONE. Life is not a
series of separate, discrete experiences influenced by diverse forces. God and the poor man’s
son belong together. Life is a moral continuum and reality makes sense.
Moshe smashes the tablets. The Covenant is broken. He melts down the idol and grinds it to
powder which he forces the Israelites to drink. Aharon explains. Moshe calls for those who
stand with him to kill the rest. The Sons of Levi did so, slaughtering 3,000 men. This had to
happen or the Exodus story might have ended there. Oppressive story. Augustine of Hippo will
say: “If you understand, it is not God.”
Children of Israel do not improve. God decides to make the wander the Sinai for forty years
before settlement in Canaan – all the Egyptian complainers will die out and be replaced by a
more rugged generation hardened by wilderness trials. Influence of the environment to shape
conscience and consciousness.
Cult and culture were so wedded in the ancient world that appreciating the cultural values of
Egypt or Sumer, or Babylon later, would lead the Israelites from the difficulties of serving the
living God to the easy worship of the Golden Calf.
So great revelations of who God is and his Commandments occur in mountainous desert
places, as far from civilization as possible. People would only listen to God’s voice in extremity –
in a place stripped of all cultural references and devoid of life (desert). Here the Israelites learn
to be human in a new way.
God reveals himself as a God of mercy and forgiveness who never deserts his people. Moshe is
the go-between between God and man, representing both. He must be clever (like Odysseus) –
but he never relies on his own talents – only on God’s word. He becomes “the humblest man on
earth.” He becomes an authentic medium – a true channel.
Both Avraham and Moshe were settled, prosperous men who are called to be nomads. Who
knows how many such men ignored the call.
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The family god of Avraham, the Terror of Yitzhak, the Angel who wrestled with Israel has
become the God of a people – the Israelites – whom He will guard “like a jealous husband.” He
becomes the universal God, the Creator of all.
“Everything proceeds from the double revelation of Sinai: the covenant of the Ten Words and
the revelation of God’s essential self: HE-WHO-IS; HE-WHO-WILL-BE-THERE.
T.S. Eliot: “ We only live, only suspire / Consumed by either fire or fire.” Either by the wrath of
the storm god or the love of the living God. We cannot avoid life and its suffering: we can be
consumed by fear and passion or “allow God to refine us in his fire and shape us into a fitting
instrument for his revelation, as he did Moshe. “ God’s fire will not destroy, but perfect us, for
“the bush is not consumed.”
This insight lights up the greatest works of Western literature. Allen Ginsberg: “The only poetic
tradition is the voice out of the burning bush.”