Hebrew Bible Interpretation 1, Lecture 9, Transcript

(169) Hebrew Bible Interpretation 1, Lecture 9 - YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqORL3OPAFU

Transcript:

(00:04) - Today, I am going to try and show you why all of this source stuff that I keep going on and on about matters. Not why it's interesting from a historical perspective, I think that's fairly obvious, but why it matters for you today, and for anyone who wants to read the text from a theological perspective.

(00:28) That's my aim for today, and I may, 'cause I have a, I'm trying to do a lot of stuff, I may go a little fast, and I may try and cram a lot in. So you know, watch me for the changes and try to keep up. Is that a reference that anybody in the class gets? I think, oh, man, it's just fewer and fewer.

(00:46) That's Back to the Future everybody, which was a movie with, nobody? Okay. (audience laughs) God. Okay, I don't have time. All right, so where are we in the story? The story of the, oh my God, my screen just went out. There it is. Where are we in the story? According to all of our sources, the Israelites have left Egypt, and they have traveled some distance in the wilderness, and they have arrived finally, in Exodus 19, at the mountain.

(01:16) I didn't say Sinai, because not all the sources call it Sinai, right? J calls it Sinai, and P calls at Sinai, but E calls it Horev, or Horeb, I don't know, and D also calls it Horev. And I'm not even gonna get into for the moment where those mountains are geographically, because that's not important in the story, it doesn't tell us, so stop trying to find them on a map. Here at the mountain, God will deliver through Moses His laws.

(01:41) And on this, everyone agrees. But they differ on the details as always. And we can tell this right away, since if we try to read it straight through, we realize that God seems to give the same law twice, or gives two contradictory laws. I talked about this a couple weeks ago. And there are of course, problems in the narratives that lead up to the laws, where are the laws given? How are the laws given? Why are the laws given? And what are the laws? Which again, is a narrative claim, right, and I realized we didn't read the actual laws for this time, so we'll deal with that issue in future sessions.

(02:23) This central moment, this moment at the mountain, this moment that defines in many ways God's relationship with Israel, is rendered in very different manners by the different sources. I personally struggle to make sense of the canonical text as a whole.

(02:54) How many times does Moses have to go up and down the mountain? Up, down, up, down, up, up, up, down, up, down, okay. But more importantly than the silliness, what is the theological message of the canonical story here? This seminal, this central moment, is full of mixed messages, odd sequences of speeches, weird combinations of laws and covenants, variously stated intentions and results.

(03:30) And I pause it with texts like this, which we can extend to being the entirety of the Pentateuch if we like, there are really two paths that the theologically minded interpreter can take. We can find key elements that guide our interpretation, but in doing so we aren't necessarily ignoring or downplaying others. Or we can try and find a theological statement that encompasses all of the disparate parts of the text.

(03:59) But that ends up often if not always, reducing the text to essentially its lowest common denominator. Right, we end up with something banal and obvious, something that required no great insight. I often find myself saying that, if we reduced the Pentateuch or the Bible to like, it's one common theological statement, it would be something like, Yahweh is the God of Israel, that is all.

(04:23) Right, like that's all we get. So what I wanna do today, what I wanna do is, I want to look at all three versions of this moment, Israel encounters God at the mountain. I'm gonna look at all three versions independently in some detail, because what I'm gonna try and demonstrate today is that when we can see what the individual strands are doing, we can put them together in a way that makes the hole deeper and more interesting than it is if we just try and read it straight through and flatten the whole thing, okay? That's the task.

(05:03) And now I'm gonna to go through the stories. I'm gonna start with the E story because it's the one that will feel the most familiar to you. The E story contains many of the best known elements of this part of the text, the 10 commandments, the golden calf.

(05:30) But these familiar elements may be somewhat de-familiarized, when we read them carefully in their original context. The E story begins here, in Exodus 19, with the Israelites encamped in front of the mountain, not Sinai, the mountain is Horev, also known as the mountain of God.

(05:51) And we knew they were gonna end up here from the very beginning, right, ever since Exodus 3, right? Where, you know, God says, where Moses arrives at Horev, of the mountain of God while tending the flock, and he says, "When you have." God says, "When you free the people, you will worship God at this mountain." Here we are back there now. And they've been there, the Israelites, ever since Exodus 18, right? A chapter back, right, where Moses was encamped there at the mountain of God.

(06:19) So here we are at the mountain, and Moses goes up the mountain to talk to God, who gives him a message for Israel. And the message is, "You have seen what I did." You seen what I did, in other words, you are obligated to me. "Now keep my covenant." The terms of which you do not yet know. "And you as a people will be special to me." That's the message.

(06:56) And Moses goes back and relays the message to the people, and they respond as the as they should. "All that the Lord has spoken, we will do." And of course, all they've agreed to is the general principle of a covenant, right? They don't know the details yet, they don't know what the actual, you know, requirements are going to be, but seems a perfectly reasonable thing to do at this moment.

(07:15) And Moses, presumably relays the people's acceptance to God. And what comes next is the key sentence for understanding much of what's gonna happen next in the story. "I will come to you in a thick cloud, in order that the people may hear when I speak with you, and trust you ever after.

(07:42) " This, according to the text, according to E, is the purpose of the Theophany, right? The Theophany is appearance of the Deity, right? The purpose of the Theophany. This is why God is going to appear. Not for God's sake, but for Moses' sake, and not just appear, but speak,. God is going to speak such that all of Israel can hear it, because Moses is going to be the one giving the laws to the Israelites, ad Moses will be leading them through the wilderness to the promised land.

(08:14) The Israelites have to learn to trust Moses. They have to know that when Moses says he heard from God, he actually heard from God, right? And God is aware of this. And right, this is the purpose of God's revelation, Theophany, is to make Moses trustworthy in the sight of the people. And, "There is thunder and lightning, and the cloud on the mountain," that God promised. I'll come down in the cloud and a horn.

(08:51) And the people still in the camp at the foot of the mountain are afraid, and with good reason, right? This, you know this sort of sound and light show, this is the Theophany proper, right? This is the appearance, the descent of the Deity. They can't actually see Him of course, He comes in a cloud. But Moses remembers, right? Moses knows, that the people can't just sit in the camp afraid, right? They have to actually hear God talking to Moses, that's the whole point.

(09:24) So he brings the people out of the camp toward God, to the foot of the mountain itself. And once there, the people tremble even more, they're even more afraid, and the horn gets louder, right? It's intensifying. And God speaks in thunder, right? And note, so what's happening right, it's dialogue, right? Moses and God are speaking.

(09:51) Moses is saying whatever Moses is saying, it doesn't matter, and God is responding in thunder. And so the point is that in E, the Theophany is, an auditory experience, right? It's all about what the Israelites hear. And what they hear amid the horn and the thunder is this, "I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt." In other words, you are obligated to me.

(10:24) (audience laughs) It wasn't just that it was a noise at that moment, it sounded like a shofar. And it was like, it was so there, okay. And then God goes on with the rest of the 10 commandments, which I'm not gonna get into. And the people who witnessed the thunder, and the lightning, and the horn, and the mountain, they're remember, petrified, the people were scared already.

(10:51) And they move away from the mountain, and they say exactly what God and Moses want to hear from them. "You speak to us," they say to Moses, "And we will obey." We don't want to hear God talking anymore. Right, it's too scary, it's too scary. In other words, okay, Moses, we appoint you as official prophet for God, we believe it, we believe it, please act as our intermediary with the Deity.

(11:23) Which again, is exactly what God had said, the purpose of the Theophany was, "I will speak to you and the people will hear, and so trust you ever after." And Moses naturally approves, "Be not afraid, God has come only in order to give you this experience of having heard this, right, so that you will fear Him, so that you do not break the covenant.

(11:48) " And so here we have repeated, again, the rationale for the Theophany on E. It's so that the people will listen when Moses speaks, and obey the laws that Moses puts in front of them in the name of God. And notice, it's not just the Theophany, not just like the smoke, and the cloud, and the noise, that's intended for this purpose, it's the 10 commandments themselves.

(12:14) Although they are laws, they are certainly laws, they are perhaps more importantly, the evidence God gives to the Israelites of Moses' prophetic role, that people hear God giving laws. Now, when Moses says to them, here are the laws that God gave you, there'll be like, all right, that rings true, that's the kind of thing God says, okay.

(12:40) After the people have accepted Moses as their intermediary, Moses goes back to the mountain to the cloud, where God is, right, and he gets the laws that you're just gonna study in your section this week, he gets the laws that extend until the end of Exodus 23. These laws, these laws are the content of the covenant according to E. These laws are, not the 10 commandments, these laws are what the people accepted, in principle at the beginning of the episode.

(13:10) And now having received these laws, Moses goes back to the people and repeats everything he's just heard, all the commands and the rules. Notice, he doesn't need to do that for the 10 commandments, the Israelites heard those, right, so these laws that Moses has received privately, right, he now goes and repeats to the Israelites.

(13:32) And the people respond just the way they did before, but now they know what they're saying yes to. And Moses, this is a long one, Moses writes down the laws and sets up an altar and some pillars and offer sacrifices and reads the terms of the covenant to them again. And again, the people formally accept, right, so they accept three times, once before they know it's in it, once when they've heard it orally, once it's been put down in writing, and the people say, yes, "All the Lord is spoken we will faithfully do.

(14:03) " And Moses says, terrific, and throw some blood on them, and then the people, right, eat and drink to celebrate the making of the covenant. And God tells Moses to come up again, so that God can give him the stone tablets, which God Himself has inscribed. And Moses and Joshua go, and they leave Aaron and Hur, the poor Hur, who only shows up in contexts like this is like Aaron sidekick, they go and leave Aaron and Hur in charge, and Moses ascends the mountain, and is there for 40 days and 40 nights. And God gives Moses the two tablets of stone

(14:43) inscribed with the finger of God. And then, as you know, things take a turn for the bad. The people who were so ready to accept the laws grow impatient. And they, with Aaron's help, create of course, the golden calf. And they say, "This is your God, O Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt." And they build an altar, and they sacrifice, and they have a party, right? They eat and drink again, right, like a separate ceremony kind of thing.

(15:24) So I want us to understand here, is this important? Because this is one of the fundamental classic misunderstandings the golden calf episode, the Israelites and the golden calf episode are not worshiping a foreign different God, this is not apostasy, right? They're not forsaking the worship of Yahweh, they are trying their hardest to worship Yahweh without Moses, their leader around, and not quite knowing or remembering what it is they're supposed to be doing, right? Think of what Aaron says, "Tomorrow shall be a festival of the Lord, of Yahweh."

(15:57) Aaron knows that they're supposed to be Yahweh, right? They're trying to worship Yahweh, they're just doing it badly. Especially since the very first law, not of the 10 commandments, but the first law of the covenant code, the first law of the covenant code is, "With me you shall not make any gods of silver or gold.

(16:22) " That's the thing they've done wrong, right? They're not worshiping a foreign god, they're worshiping Yahweh wrongly with gold. - [Audience Member] How do I know that? - How do I know that? (audience laughs) So again, know is not a word we use in here. How do I think that? In this case, again, if it's clear that the Israelites are, think they're worshiping Yahweh here, right, that the calf is Yahweh.

(17:00) And again, it's not just that Aaron says, let's have a festival of Yahweh, it's that next slide, well done, it's that, the people say, "This is your God O Israel who brought you out of the land of Egypt." Who else did they think do that? They don't think that some other God did that. They didn't forget which God it was that did it, right? They think, in making a calf they're making a statue of Yahweh.

(17:19) And if they think they're making a statue of Yahweh, then they're not violating the 10 commandments, which says, "You shall have no other gods before me." There's no other god involved here, right? The issue is not which God they're worshiping, it's how they're worshiping the God.

(17:41) So yeah, from for me, once I'm convinced that in the story, everybody clearly thinks that they're worshiping Yahweh, then which law are they violating? And it makes sense given the fact that the covenant, the law of the covenant codes, was like, was the law collection on which the covenant was actually based.

(18:08) They just did the whole covenant ceremony, right, like, it would be the first of those laws that they violate that God is like, I can't believe they just like, we just went over this, they just accepted it, right. That's the covenant collection, the law collection that they had just said yes to, and then immediately violated, okay. Why is this here? Not only as written responses to the question remarkably, but, right, this is here because, it's not just the Israelites say, this is your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, and who else would they think do it, they're literally saying back to God, God's own words from the 10 commandments, right? I am your God who brought you out in the land of Egypt,

(18:47) that okay, this calf, this is our God who brought us out of into Egypt, not some other one did it, but this is that, right, it's just an equation I assume, I haven't marked how math works. Okay, we should understand that this story also has a distinct political message, this E and the golden calf in particular.

(19:05) We're not there in our biblical story yet, but you should know it for history. After the northern and southern kingdoms of Israel split, we're in the beginning of the book of Kings now, after the death of Solomon, Jerusalem, the central sanctuary belonged to the southern kingdom, and the new king of the north, Jeroboam, decides to set up alternative sites of worship for his Kingdom, right? Right, we've got two kingdoms now, the guy in the north doesn't want everybody in his area going down to Jerusalem to worship, right, bringing all of their money and their stuff down there,

(19:38) no, no, no. We're two kingdoms, I get my own sanctuaries, just like the south gets its own sanctuary, and so he sets up two major sanctuaries, one in Bethel in the south of his territory, and one at (indistinct) in the north of his territory, at the extreme ends of the kingdom, and Jeroboam says, I want the people to come worship here, not in Jerusalem, enough of my people going there. And in each of those places, he placed golden calf.

(20:04) He also was not worshiping some other god, right? He was setting up temples to Yahweh in his kingdom. And nowhere in the Bible does it ever claim that he thought he was doing anything else, right. There's lots of castigation of Jeroboam for doing this, but it's not for worshiping a foreign god, is for improperly worshiping Yahweh.

(20:26) And Jeroboam says to the people, you have been going to Jerusalem long enough. This is your God O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt, which ought to seem familiar. So in other words, the golden calf story in Exodus from E, seems I think, relatively clearly to be a polemic against the sanctuaries of the northern kingdom.

(20:59) The sanctuaries, the northern kingdom, that claim to be the correct authentic worship of God, and somebody writes a story in which the Israelites back in the day did the exact same thing, with very bad effects. Okay, now, I have to keep going. Now, God tells Moses, who's still up on the mountain 40 days and 40 nights, God tells Moses what happened, "Hurry down, your people have been quick to turn aside from the way that I enjoined upon them.

(21:21) " Again, that's the covenant, that's the covenant that they just made. "They've made themselves a molten calf and bowed low to it, and sacrifice to it," right, "Do not make with me gods of silver or gold." And God wants to destroy Israel entirely. But Moses intercedes, he goes on and on and on. It's not important. Moses intercedes, I'm just giving you all the text for your notes.

(21:47) God relents. And Moses goes down with the tablets in his hand. Notice just how much emphasis is placed on the tablets being God's writing, right? In this one verse, right? He's already gotten them. So it's like this moment, as he's coming down with them, suddenly, it's like, tablets inscribed on both their surfaces, one side and the other, God's work, the writing was God's writing on the tablets, and why to set all that up, because we need to explain just how incredible what Moses does next, actually is, right? Because he goes down and sees the calf.

(22:28) And he shatters these tablets on the ground. And in what can only be described as a typical parental moment of peak, he grinds up the calf and makes the Israelites drink it. This is like, this never happens anymore. But this is like, you know, in like old TV shows and movies, where like, the parent catches the kid having one cigarette, and it's like, all right, you're smoking the whole pack.

(22:54) Like that's essentially this. All right, you like this guy, you're gonna eat it. And Aaron, Aaron somehow talks his way out of this, like Aaron basically lies, like, I don't know, they came to me and they were like, I just throw some golden thing and out came a calf. And, you know, somehow that works. And Moses, having seen it for himself, now goes and asks for God's forgiveness, right? You know, he got God to renounce the punishment, but now he wants to make sure that like, that's there's true forgiveness,

(23:36) having witnessed it himself. And God granted, sort of, right, okay, like, I'll take care of this in my own time, in my own terms, but you guys can, like I'm not gonna destroy you all now, on with your travels. And He tells Moses to take the people to the promised land. And He even gives Moses a divine messenger to help lead them, the word messenger there is almost always translated as angel.

(24:01) And you should almost always not, right, angel is not really, angel is a Greek word, right? And the word angel in Greek means messenger, okay, good. - [All] Messenger. So the problem is that like our word angel now means something like, evokes a sort of specific image. And it shouldn't, right.

(24:32) Divine messengers can come in all sorts of shapes and forms and are really not equivalent to anything like our current concept of angel. Okay, He gives Moses a divine messenger to help bring them in, which is something that Moses actually already knew, 'cause back at the end of the laws, God said, I'm giving a messenger, sending a messenger before you to take you. And then, with all that done, we get a brief interlude. Again, you don't have to read the whole thing right now.

(24:56) I'm gonna describe it, a brief interlude in which we learn how God and Moses are going to speak when the Israelites have left the mountain. This is Tent of Meeting, right? Moses goes out, God descends in a pillar of cloud outside of the tent. And God speaks to Moses, "face to face," although God is in a cloud, and Moses is in a tent.

(25:18) But note again here, the importance of Moses' prophetic station, right? Moses is the guy that God communicates with. And after this little interlude, God tells Moses, "All right, gotta make two new tablets," and says, He will reinscribe on them precisely what was on the first set.

(25:43) And Moses does so and goes up with tablets, and God comes down in the cloud, right? That's how God communicates everywhere in the E story, this E story, God comes down in the cloud, whether it's on the mountain, or in the tent, or on the mountain again, and Moses is there 40 days and 40 nights, that's how long this process takes, everybody.

(26:02) And God writes on the tablets, the terms of the covenant, the 10 commandments, and the tablets are therefore the sign of the renewal of the covenant that was broken with the sin of the golden calf, right, the tablets aren't the covenant itself, and never were, they are a symbol of the basic whole agreement. And that is the E story. When I've taken all that out, what's left for J, right? What's left of the material, right? E clearly has the bulk of it, you might not actually recognize almost any parts of the J story, it's very different.

(26:37) Of course, it's all taken directly from the text. So let's turn to our blue text. I'm gonna breathe for like one second. "God says to Moses," in J. "All right, tell the people to get ready 'cause on the third day, I'm going to appear before them all on mountain Sinai." I'm gonna appear before them.

(27:07) And then He gives Moses some explicit instructions regarding the sanctity of the mountain, no one goes up it, no one touches it, you don't touch, anyone who touches it, even the animals don't touch it, only when the horn sounds, that's when it's safe to go up the mountain. Couple of things to notice. First, these instructions seem to assume that the people are gonna really, really want to approach the mountain. Right, the people have to be held back.

(27:35) They'd be held back from the mountain, which is markedly different from what we saw in E, when the people have to be dragged there, against their will, 'cause they're so terrified. Second, in this story, the horn marks the end of the Theophany, when it's safe to go up the mountain. In E, the horn marked the beginning of the Theophany.

(28:04) And I point that out, because this is one of the things that makes this chapter so difficult to understand, 'cause God says, when you hear the horn, it's safe. And then the story goes on, and then E's horn sounds before God has come down on the mountain, and it's for sure is not safe.

(28:25) All right, Moses, having heard all of this news, passes this all on to the people, he comes down, he warns the people to stay pure, they wash their clothes, and he tells them not to approach any woman, right? This is a language of purity and impurity. We'll get there next time. And on the third day, just as predicted, Mount Sinai is covered in smoke, because God was on it in fire, not clouds and thunder and lightning, smoke and fire.

(28:52) This Theophany is visual, not auditory, right, I will appear before them, smoke and fire. And God comes down upon Mount Sinai and calls Moses up. And tells Moses basically the same thing He told him before, keep the people, God is really concerned that the people are gonna rush the mountain, really concerned.

(29:23) And Moses basically is like, yep, you said that already, right, we're good on that. And God is like, no, no, no, go down. But nope, like, you can come up with (indistinct) No one (indistinct) no, that's fine. Moses goes down and passes it on again. And then finally God tells Moses, okay, come up the mountain, you and your companions, Aaron and Aaron's sons, Nadab and Abihu and 70 elders.

(29:49) They're not gonna come all the way up the mountain, right, only you get to come all the way up the mountain Moses. And that's what they do, Moses and Aaron and Nadab and Abihu and 70 elders go up, and they see God. Notice, we've already had one visual Theophany, right, we've seen smoke and fire of God descending on the mountain, the people from a distance.

(30:13) Now we get a second one, a more explicit Theophany, right? The people saw God and fire. Moses and his group see God, Himself, you know, like from below. And we can see how strange it is that this was allowed, right? The text is even like, and they saw Him and He didn't hurt them before it even right, this is not a normal thing. A closer Theophany for these important elders.

(30:40) Now God says to Moses, you know, alone, Moses has now gone all the way up the mountain as instructed. Moses finally gets to the top of the mountain, and God's like, awesome, get out of here. He doesn't give him any laws. He doesn't make a covenant, right? He just says, okay, time to leave. Did y'all saw me? The people saw me, the elders saw me, cool, go.

(31:13) But He says, I'm not gonna go with you though. Like when you guys leave from here, I'm out. I'm not gonna go with you. Y'all are a troublesome kind of people. What's God referring to here though? Why is J's God, like, I don't really want much more to do with you guys. Well, think about, it definitely been a couple chapters, right? Between leaving Exodus and arriving at the mountain, what happened in the J story? The people complained about not having enough water.

(31:50) The people broke the Sabbath, which they had just been told about. And the people complained again, about, you know about water. Especially the people in like, just chapters 15, 16 and 17. Right, just the chapters between crossing the Red Sea and arriving at Sinai, the people have just complained essentially nonstop, about, you know, is God taking care of them and all these things.

(32:19) And basically God's like, okay, if they keep this up, I'm gonna lose it. Serious. Like, they're stiff necked, and they're stubborn, and they complain a lot. And if I were to hang out with you guys, like, I would destroy you, right? It's always helpful to think of God as parents, it helps a lot. I will stop this car right now, is what that is, okay.

(32:53) So God says, I'm gonna send a messenger to lead the people, but He's not going. So here's another difference between J and E, right? In E, the messenger is a good thing, right? God promises to send the messenger, right, it's gonna be terrific. I'm gonna send a messenger who's gonna take you in and lead you and that's gonna be great. In J, it's part of a threat. I'm not going to with you.

(33:11) I'm gonna have to send a messenger 'cause it sure can't be me, okay. And Moses reacts, Moses is like, man, I can't do this myself. You need to lead us, this nation is your people. And God relents and says, fine, I'll go. And Moses asks, again, like, come on, you like you mean it? Like you're gonna, you got to go, right? And God again says, fine.

(33:39) (indistinct) Moses and God do the same thing, back into God was like, don't have anyone come up the mountain, and Moses is like, okay, and goes like, don't have anyone come up the mountain, was like, okay. Now Moses is like, you're gonna have with us, right? And He's like, yeah, you're gonna come with us, right? Yeah, okay. So they're talking to each other in the same way.

(33:54) I will say this kind of like, pushing back against God a little bit, like testing the boundaries of what's possible, this is pretty typical of Moses in J, right? Back in Exodus 4 who's like, what if they don't trust me? What if they don't trust me? I don't know about this, man.

(34:13) Right, that's Moses in J, this is also Abraham and J, right? In the Sodom and Gomorrah episode, where he's like, are you sure 10 people, five people, right? That's all J, that's like how people, that's how these people talk, okay. And Moses, having gotten God's agreement to come with them is like, while I have you? While I have you, can I get a look? (audience laughs) And God says yes, though, with conditions, "I will go before you and I will proclaim before you my name and my grace and my compassion, but you can't see my face.

(34:44) " No one gets to see my face, but I'll let you see my back. And He continues, all right, you can see my back. So here's what's gonna happen, you're gonna be ready in the morning and you're gonna come up to the top of the mountain by yourself, right? No one else is gonna be with you.

(35:04) Remember, no one comes near the mountain, no animals, no people, nothing, right? This is very same consistent thread. And early in the morning, Moses goes up the mountain, Mount Sinai, and God stands with him there and proclaims His own name, Yahweh. And God passes before Moses and gives His wonderful self description, which you'll notice, includes grace and compassion, but it's also super vindictive, right? Like, yes, it begins, compassionate and gracious, but like, you know, third and fourth generations are gonna suffer for the sins of their parents, that's awesome.

(35:42) So you know, this isn't dissimilar, right? We've been talking already about this God in J who is like, I get angry, right? Like, I don't wanna be with you, right? This is the same God that threatens to destroy Israel if they keep on you know, bugging Him. And we have another that's, in this moment we have the third Theophany, right, to the most restricted group of all, just Moses, and an even greater degree of revelation, smoke and fire, God like from below, and then God up close, God's back passing by, okay.

(36:20) So that's the Theophany. And Moses still can't quite let go. Right, that's the, why is that there? I don't know. Moses can't let go of God accompanying the Israelites in the wilderness and like asks again at this moment, and that's the J story, right? It ends with this moment of Theophany on the mountaintop. So I wanna note a few remarkable things.

(36:51) According to J, the purpose of the Theophany is just for God to appear. On the third day, God's gonna show up in the sight of the people, right? We don't remember that in E, is so that the people can hear God and Moses talking and trust Moses forever and after, not here, just see. Why in J is it important that the people see God? Because in the episode in J, just before this, the people doubted God's presence among them.

(37:23) They tried the Lord saying, is the Lord present among us or not, and God's like, okay. Give me three days, and I'm gonna show up, and they're gonna know that I'm here. Right, so God's appearance in J, the purpose of the Theophany on the mountain in the wilderness, is to demonstrate to the people that God is in fact in their midst, but ironically, the only message God intends to deliver on this occasion is, I am not going to do this anymore, get out of here.

(37:57) Which again, like, is not like the story we know, but it's a story that's totally sensible. The people since leaving Egypt have been a pain, right, again, and again, and again. And the climax of their complaint is, is God even here or not? And God who is already, does nothing but admit how angry He gets. He's like, oh, yeah, I am.

(38:17) I'm gonna show myself to them, but that's it. But they're gonna know that I was here the whole time, and now they're not gonna have me anymore, right? I can't go with them, it's too dangerous, I'm gonna destroy them, right? They just did nothing but irritate me, I'm gonna send a messenger, but get out of here, right. And so that's the purpose of the thing.

(38:35) Okay, notice also what's not in the J story at all, there's no tablets, there's no 10 commandments, there's no golden calf, there's no law, there's no covenant, right? Those have no place in this story. Right, this story is a totally logical, self contained sequence. There's no place for any of that stuff in it.

(38:52) The J story is a commentary on Israel's lack of faith, and on God's lack of patience. That's what this E is story about. Now the P, which is the briefest of the three, thankfully, at least in its narrative, right? Like P's laws are gigantic and enormous, and we're gonna do them all next week, but the story part is quite brief.

(39:28) Back to the beginning of Exodus 19, "The Israelites encamp in the wilderness of Sinai, terrific, and a cloud covers the mountain." These like feel so abbreviated after the last two. "And the presence of the Lord dwells on Sinai, and is hidden in a cloud for six days. And on the seventh day, God calls to Moses from the cloud." Hmm, six days, and then a seventh day, that's a familiar pattern to me from let's say, the most famous of the P texts that exists.

(39:58) So God calls Moses from the cloud, we are told that the presence of God appears like, there's like this consuming fire in the cloud, right? So there's a visual aspect here. "And Moses goes inside the cloud and goes up the mountain." And God then speaks to Moses for six chapters, which you will read soon enough, but you should know that in that text of Exodus 25 through 31, God doesn't actually give Moses any laws, right? When Moses goes up the mountain to talk to God, God doesn't give Moses laws, God gives Moses instructions for building the tabernacle,

(40:43) which is the little building where He's gonna dwell among the Israelites. We'll get to it next time. "And when God finishes speaking with Moses on Mount Sinai, He gives Moses the," something. The word in Hebrew is edut, and we don't know what it really means, is not super clear, it seems like something like testimony or material evidence, it is not the same thing as the tablets, which, as in J are nowhere in P, right? Like, there's no place for tablets with laws on them or anything here, that doesn't make sense. But the edut seems to be some sort of physical marker,

(41:18) and Moses goes down the mountain with the edut. "And when Moses comes down, he doesn't realize that he has been changed," right? He radiates, you know, something, light. This, of course is the text from which we get the long standing, amazing, amazing tradition that Jews have horns, which is because the word for horns, and the word for rays of light is essentially the same.

(41:53) And so he's reading this stuff, and the Israelites are like, whoa, dude, like, have you, like, have you seen? And Moses explains, right, like, and they come back. And after Moses has transmitted the contents of the revelation, which again, is the tabernacle, blueprint, not laws, right, he puts on a veil.

(42:27) And we're told that every time Moses got or gave a divine message, he would uncover his face, and when he concludes, he puts the veil back on again. Okay? That's it, While the J and E accounts of what happened at Sinai, or Horev and here, the priestly account continues on through Leviticus, all the way through Numbers 10, and we're gonna read that in the near future.

(42:53) But Moses is never gonna go up the mountain again in P, right? There are no laws given on top of the mountain in P, there is no covenant at the mountain in P, neither here nor in what follows. That's the entirety of the P story. Moses goes up, gets himself a blueprint, comes down, and has a shiny face, the end, okay? When these three stories were put together, four major things occurred.

(43:23) And you can understand, just, you know, sort of, on the face of it, why it makes sense for these stories to be put together, right? Like, this is the moment according to everybody where God and Moses get together on a mountaintop in the wilderness. This is the one time, and so it becomes one story, and four things happen.

(43:44) First of all, the Theophanies in E and J, right, the auditory Theophany of E, and the visual Theophany of J are combined into one single Theophany. Secondly, the moment when Moses goes up the mountain in E to receive the 10 commandments, the tablets, the first time, is aligned with the moment in P, where Moses goes up to receive the instructions for building the tabernacle.

(44:11) Third, the tablets of the 10 commandments or the tablets of the covenant in E are equated with the edut, this like weird whatever it is, in P. And fourth, the moment when Moses goes up the mountain in E to receive the second set of tablets is equated with the moment in J where Moses goes up to see God pass before him, and God tells Moses, to get the hell out of here. Okay.

(44:48) Three stories of a Theophany on a mountain. Three very different stories. For each one of the sources, this is the central defining moment. Each of the sources, each of these stories, speaks to the different views of God's relationship to Israel. One, emphasizes the prophetic aspect, God and Israel's obligation to listen when Moses and prophets speak, to obey when they deliver God's word.

(45:25) One story emphasizes God's twin aspects of compassion, and wrath, and one emphasizes, admittedly, mostly in the parts we haven't read, God's dwelling in the midst of His people, right, in the tabernacle. Each of these represents the central concern of each of these biblical authors.

(45:52) In seeing each of these, we can see some at least of the variety of ways in which the ancient Israelites conceived of their relationship with God. Each of these perspectives is present in the biblical text, but they're hidden. The complementary with E, right, these complimentary views of Israel's relationship with God, these distinctive views of Israel's relationship with God are tangled up and woven together in the canonical text.

(46:29) You've probably never seen J's understanding of Israel's relationship with God, because it's tangled up with E's more famous one. But when we unravel the canonical text, when we unravel these tangled strands, we see each of them more clearly. Source criticism doesn't destroy the meaning of the canonical text, it reveals the meanings present in the text.

(47:05) And once we recognize these meanings, it becomes hard to ignore them. Each one of these stories, each one of these strands, each one of these sources, authors, each one of these views of God's relationship with mankind is part of the biblical text, and each one of them was on completely equal footing, taken up into what we now call scripture.

(47:33) No one of these stories is superior to another, none overrides another, none is more true than another. Right, there are three distinct theological views, three equal parts of the biblical text and tradition. How you go about creating an interface among them is, in large part up to you.

(48:03) But recognize that if you ignore one of them, or give preference to one of them, then you're reading against the text. The text in having brought all of these together and include them in their entireties in one single text, the text says to us, all of these perspectives are valuable. All are welcome. If you want to read the Bible, you have to accept that it encodes a inherent diversity of opinion, means you have to work at reading it, not flattening it.

(48:49) But holding simultaneously and intention, disparate understandings of God handed down to us by the text itself within the text itself, you have to work at it. Speaking of work, next time we're reading Leviticus. So put your ritual hats on, it's gonna be fun. Okay, that's it.