Stephen
Terry, Director
Israel
in Egypt
Commentary
for the June 25, 2022, Sabbath School Lesson
"By
faith Joseph, when his end was near, spoke about the exodus of the Israelites
from Egypt and gave instructions concerning the burial of his bones." Hebrews
11:22, NIV
As we close out the book of
Genesis with Jacob blessing his offspring prior to his death and Joseph's eventual
death at the age of 110, we close out this window on the Bronze Age as well.
Then following the collapse of much of civilization, the Mycenean Dark Ages
leave us with many mysteries about the history of the near east and the levant
as society tries to regain its footing over the ensuing centuries. Even the
Bible is silent regarding the almost apocalyptic transition to the Iron Age.
Egypt regained some of its former glory under Ramses II and Ramses III. But the
Hittites, the same people who sold Abraham the first land he owned in Canaan,
were no longer an empire. The Assyrians were struggling to re-emerge and would
eventually challenge and absorb the Kingdom of Israel to leave only Judah and
Jerusalem to finally be conquered by Babylon, the same kingdom that also
conquered Assyria. Ironically, the Hittites during the Bronze Age had conquered
Babylon. But despite their newly realized power with the Hittites gone and
Assyria defeated, Babylon would all too soon fall before what would become the
Persian Empire, the ancient foundation for modern Iran.
Even though we have nowhere near
the knowledge we would like to have of Bronze Age civilization, every society
has a desire to know where they came from and why. They believe that hidden in
that elusive story are answers to their own angst about where their people
might be headed. The purposes for existence are often acted out in the lives
and interactions of mythological beings. The Greeks had their gods and
demi-gods as did the Egyptians. The Babylonians had their god-like hero kings,
harkening back to the mythology surrounding Nimrod and Semiramis. The parallels
found in these mythologies reveal a deeply felt need to explain the distant
past and find in that explanation a justification for exceptionality for one's
own people. We may chuckle about these myths, feeling that these are the
creations of primitive people who knew little better, but such myth making
continues today unabated. We see it in movies and on television. Americans make
movies with American heroes. Russians make them with Russian heroes, and so it
goes for country after country, perpetrating the myth of each country's
exceptionalism.
No one would look to any of the
movies in Sylvester Stallone's "Rambo" series as actual documentary evidence of
historical events. They recognize them for what they are, an attempt to bolster
patriotism and an American identity. Many young men have willingly sacrificed their
lives because of the surge of nationalism that swells within their breasts
after viewing these movies. After World War II, John Wayne movies like "The
Sands of Iwo Jima" fueled enlistments for the Korean War. The movie based on Michener?s
novel, "The Bridges at Toko-Ri" served the same purpose leading into the
Vietnam era. Each generation has been fed a mythos that causes them to feel
they must rise to the same standard of patriotism as their forebears to preserve
their way of life. We tend not to realize that every nationality does this as a
matter of self-preservation. When others do it, it is propaganda. When we do
it, it is patriotism. This is no different than all the others believe as well.
Why is this important? It helps
us to understand a biblical account that cannot be backed up with archeological
evidence. There is an absolute dearth of support for the idea of a widespread destruction
as depicted in Exodus, Deuteronomy, and Joshua. This is despite strong
incentive to distort interpretations of archaeological finds to prove such a
connection. As of the current moment, there is little support for such a
connection among noted archaeologists. Some would even go further, claiming
that not only is the Bronze Age patriarchal period mythology but even the story
of Moses is mythology resurrected from that earlier period. There is some
evidence that the earliest chapters of Genesis are a patchwork of earlier accounts
that fail to harmonize on some points. While those inconsistencies have
provided careers for many apologists through the ages, it is nonetheless a
hoary maxim that truth is always consistent. Those apologists specialize in
crafting interpretations that gloss over those inconsistencies to create an
appearance of truth. Their work is a mighty endeavor because it must not only
create a paradigm of truth, sometimes out of whole cloth, to make sure that not
only does every part of the Bible appear consistent with every other part, thereby
denying the evident conflicts, but to also do the same for the resulting
dogmatic structure created based on those glosses. But as another maxim states,
if you give a fellow enough rope, he will eventually hang himself. In other
words, the more intricate these interpretations become the greater the likelihood
they will collapse under their own weight. Such a realization may be feeding a
growing disillusionment with institutional religion that attempts to justify
its existence and therefore employs legions of apologists to that end.
So, what is the real story of
Genesis? It is found in the first words of the book, "In the beginning..." Just
as in all creation stories, we find it impossible to conceive of something without
a definable beginning, if we ask someone who makes no profession of religious
belief what existed before the Big Bang, they will stumble to provide an
explanation. That's because there is no explanation. It takes us into the
nebulous query of wondering what if there was no "beginning?" What if the process
of life has no beginning or end? What if it is an infinite continuum and since
we cannot visualize eternity, we create a beginning that we can understand to
maintain our sanity in the face of an infinity we cannot. In the same way, because
we cannot draw infinity, we lay a figure 8 on its side and say, "That's
infinity!" Even though we all know that isn't true, we accept the symbolism.
If we look at how we describe God,
we can begin to understand why the symbolism and mythology of Genesis is
necessary. For instance, we say that God is omnipotent, but even a child learns
to ask, "Could God then create a rock he couldn't move?" In that question is
the recognition that we cannot define omnipotence, even though we have the word
as a placeholder for the concept. These same quandaries apply to omniscience,
omnipresence, etc. Even the most basic concept about God, "God is love," we
struggle with. We spend an entire lifetime trying to figure out what love is in
our own interpersonal relationships, eventually, at the end, finding a glimmer
of understanding, only to have it snatched from our feeble grasp by death.
This highlights our problem with
dealing with God. Our lives have a beginning and an end, as does every life on
the planet. Nothing in all of that provides us with the tools to understand or
explain God. Yet, we presumptuously take it upon ourselves to do exactly that. As
an ant that feels it must defend its definition of a giraffe to all other ants,
we presume to defend our definition of God to all other human beings. As that
ant, standing on the ground cannot even see the head of the giraffe way up in
the trees, but undertakes its defense, so do we with God. Out of this arises
many needless conflicts because we cannot admit our limitations. Faced with
these realities, it seems strange that we far more often are presented with
contrived explanations why someone's view of God, or any other matter, is the
correct one, instead of the humble acknowledgement, "I don't know." It is as
though it is a sin to admit ignorance. If someone were to ask us how many stars
are in the night sky, would we be more likely to reply, "Trillions and
trillions?" Or would we more accurately say, "I don't know!"
Some might ask how I can believe
in God then? I have found God inexplicably speaks into my life through discreet
interventions popularly called miracles. Their inexplicability is what defines
them. It is God's signature defining himself and for me, a recognizable endorsement
on what he says and does. This emphasis on personal experience may seem
threatening to mega corporations built on the premise that only they have the
full knowledge of the truth, but the Bible itself gives evidence of its truth.
There was no Bible when Abraham answered God's call to sacrifice Isaac. There
was no Bible when Joseph stood before Pharaoh, inspired to interpret his dream.
We often act as though God would not exist without the Bible, but it is the
other way around. The Bible exists because humanity, confronted with the inexplicable,
reached beyond its ability to understand for answers. In the vastness and
temerity of that reaching, we found God, and for lack of a clearer image of
him, we lent him our own.