Moses Meets the Tooth Fairy
Moses in the Basket
Exodus 1
Then a new king, who knew nothing of Joseph, came to power in Egypt. He said to his subjects, “Look how numerous and powerful the Israelite people are growing, more so than we ourselves! Come, let us deal shrewdly with them to stop their increase; otherwise, in time of war they too may join our enemies to fight against us, and so leave our country.” Accordingly, taskmasters were set over the Israelites to oppress them with forced labor. Thus they had to build for Pharaoh the supply cities of Pithom and Raamses. Yet the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread. The Egyptians, then, dreaded the Israelites and reduced them to cruel slavery, making life bitter for them with hard work in mortar and brick and all kinds of field work–the whole cruel fate of slaves.
Thus begins the tale of the slavery of the Israelites and their leader Moses. Like many in the Bible, it is a tale that’s hard to nail down. On some levels you like it. A man stands up to rescue his enslaved people, and those people go through incredible hardships to break away from their slavery. These elements have the potential to be a great story and a wonderful human drama. But when you turn the tale over and look at it underpinnings, it lacks a logical consistency and in many parts has a terrible moral foundation. As you can see, we’re going to have a ball!
Most of Moses’ tale reads like many of us remember, the Pharaoh demands that all the baby Hebrew boys be killed. First, he tells the two Hebrew midwives to kill the children, but they make excuses and demure. Then he orders all his subjects to “Throw into the river every boy that is born to the Hebrews, but you may let all the girls live.”
There is some inconsistency here. The population of Abraham’s descendants at this time is later said in the Bible to be 600,000 men, which makes a total population of at least 2.5 million people. This is a little problem now and a much bigger one later. For now, ask yourselves how two midwives can possibly care for 600,000 women That’s the three times the number of child-bearing women in my entire home state of North Dakota and only two women to help with their births? Not likely! Exaggeration must account for the rest. This becomes critical later, and I will argue this more thoroughly during the actual Exodus.
Moses mother hid him for a while but finally decides to place him in a basket and float him down the river where he’s rescued by the Pharaoh’s daughter, of all people. Moses’ sister is keeping an eye on him and she offers her mother as a wet nurse. So the mother comes and nurses her own child who is later adopted by the Pharaoh’s daughter.
Cute story, but in truth, the Pharaoh’s Daughter would have to be a pretty dim bulb not to see what was happening here. A baby floats down just as she comes to the water, and as soon as she picks it up, a young girl shows up and offers to get her a wet nurse. Uh… yeah… But perhaps, she knew she was being set up. We must assume so and that she just went along with it. She has a decidedly softer heart than her father.
So Moses grows up. Were not really sure as what. Is he Hebrew or Egyptian? He was adopted by the Pharaoh’s daughter and presumably raised as an Egyptian prince but seems to maintain ties with his cousins. However he originally was raised, he quickly comes down on the side of his biological kin, the Hebrews. For while out visiting these relations, he witnesses an Egyptian whipping a Hebrew slave.
Looking about and seeing no one, he slew the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.
Obviously, this is quite intentional and not quite like I remember the animated “Prince of Egypt” portraying it. I’m not saying the Egyptian didn’t deserve it, but this was deliberate and not some heat of the moment act. A district attorney may even call it premeditated.
Moses thinks he has gotten away with it, but the very next day the shit hits the fan. When he rebukes one Hebrew for striking another, the slave replies “Who has appointed you ruler and judge over us? Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian?” Oh shit! Moses must not have looked around as well as he had thought? He is quite understandably afraid and flees Egypt just ahead of the Pharaoh’s law.
In exile, Moses helps the daughters of a desert priest, and what do you know,marries one. Have you ever noticed how the Bible is just packed with these whirlwind “romances?” They’re like mail order brides except without the mail, of course. It’s more like picking one up at Home Depot. So Moses stays with his shiny new wife’s people, herding his father-in-law’s sheep for a living.
As an interesting aside, there seems to be a bit of confusion with this father-in-law’s name. One time they call him Jethro, next Reuel, and later Habob. Looks like someone may have been tokin’ on the weed between verses here. Or maybe it was write a verse, take a shot. Either way I’m sure it all made better sense at the time. It must have been a great party game, and the attendant hangovers would explain God’s frequent foul moods.
Anyway, we don’t know how long he stayed here, but it was long enough to have a son by his wife, Zipporah.
So one day Moses is out doing the whole herding bit, when along comes a burning bush. Here, just read it for yourselves.
Meanwhile Moses was tending the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian. Leading the flock across the desert, he came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There an angel of the LORD appeared to him in fire flaming out of a bush. As he looked on, he was surprised to see that the bush, though on fire, was not consumed. So Moses decided, “I must go over to look at this remarkable sight, and see why the bush is not burned.” When the LORD saw him coming over to look at it more closely, God called out to him from the bush, “Moses! Moses!” He answered, “Here I am.” God said, “Come no nearer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground.
You gotta just love the “Here I am.” That’s adorable!
But let’s just leave Moses at the burning bush for today and ask ourselves some pertinent questions. The first has to be the “Lord” and “angel of the Lord” interchange. This is so puzzling when viewed in the literal way so many fundamentalists profess to love. One second it will be a messenger from God, the next, God himself. Is it one or the other, or does it shift back and forth? Was Moses put on hold while god did other things? The truth is no one knows, and the writers seem wholly indifferent to the distinction. I would have thought it was just sloppy writing but for the comments made by a reviewer, Rob Crompton at snigsfoot.blogspot.com. Now, I’m taking this idea further than he may have meant, so please, give him the credit and me the blame. The idea is that these little slips may be remnants of polytheistic beliefs among the Hebrew people. Maybe, just maybe, there were originally two or more gods, and this was later edited down to one, a kind of revisionist monotheism. This is a plausible, though unprovable, thought, and I find it fascinating. We’ll have to look into this theory later.
Second is this idea that God demands to be treated a certain way. For instance, this is holy ground and Moses must take his sandals off here. Why? What exactly is holy ground from God’s point of view, and why is the removal of sandals demanded? Is he afraid Moses going to track some unsanctified mud on his sacred earth? Do shoes hurt God? Is it insulting to him? I mean really, what is it? Except for self-aggrandizement, what is the purpose to declaring certain areas as sacred and the requiring of special rituals or actions? Someone recently accused me of setting up straw-men arguments just to have an easy target, but I truly can’t see any honorable reasons for these demands. So many theists take these tenets as obvious, but have they ever sat down and actually looked at the possible reasons for these divine requirements?
An even better question is, what is the purpose of any ritual of worship? Think on this carefully. Elaborate or simple, big or small, worship rituals and services are for glorifying the Lord. Am I not right? Removing sandals, genuflecting, making the sign of the cross, singing hosannas, holy rolling, speaking in tongues, burning incense, on and on all the way up to an entire worship service itself is… well… worshipful!
That may seem obvious and a bit anti-climactic, but think on what that truly means. Why in hell would an all powerful being want people to continually perform this myriad of odd doings to show how grateful they are for him simply being him. From my atheistic point of view, this vast array of demanded actions is only intent on affirming God’s superiority. By doing these activities we demonstrate repeatedly that he is far superior and we are vastly inferior. Why is this a right and good thing?
Why does a supposedly superior being demand this abasement from us, and don’t fool yourself, abasement it is. How can we tell? Because if another human demanded any of this, even in the smallest part, it would be sickeningly servile. But no matter how much we would detest this megalomania in people, we can understand that mere humanity can become so so twisted, so flawed, so debased as to actually demand worship from their subordinates. How many can deny the truth of the phrase “Absolute power corrupts absolutely! Stalin, Hitler, Mao Tse tung, Kim Jung-Il are all names long associated with the evil of such compulsory worship. From the outside of these highly controlled societies, we speak of these rulers with derision, angered that they style themselves as superhuman, as perfect, as well… God.
Doing so, we skirt the true sin, the real crime. We sidestep the grossest of flaws in these mere men. It is not that they don’t deserve such treatment because they are not gods. It’s that no being should ever demand or desire such behavior in anyone, ever, lesser creature though they are. It’s a poor animal owner who needs that fawning, sycophantic conduct in his pets, and for Darwin’s sake, why should we hold a god to a lesser standard than we hold our own kind? Why should we tolerate and even praise actions in a God that we would abhor in one of us. Being God should require him to achieve a much higher standard, not just in power and strength, but in morality and ethics, decency and compassion. Peter Parker is right. With great power comes great responsibility, not less. Might never makes right, no matter who you are, God or no!
So tell me, is God so insecure that he needs us to praise him day and night, to cry his name in rapt adoration, for the simple act of allowing us to draw breath?
Are we so afraid of death that we demand such obsequious behavior in ourselves on the hope that our big tooth fairy will save us? Are we so truly pathetic?
It’s sad to say, but as a group, at this time, I would have to say — Yes… Yes we are!
As Homer Simpson said, “God is powerful but also insecure, like Barbara Streisand before James Brolin”
You write: “The idea is that these little slips may be remnants of polytheistic beliefs among the Hebrew people.”
I think this is correct. Monotheism doesn’t really appear until the post-exilic period. Prior to that we have a vast array of gods and I am sure that this is what is reflected in many of the the old stories. That is, what is now understood as different names of the one god in fact represents different gods. And the shifting between god and messenger which you noted here also crops up elsewhere – for example, when Yahweh turns up at Abraham’s place on the way to finding out for himself whether the rumours he’s heard about Sodom and Gomorrah are true.
I should have added to the above comment that some of these encounters with one of the gods could perhaps be better understood as and an encounter with a priest or prophet of the said god. Certainly when we get to the strange incident of the circumcision of Moses’ son, this seems to make more sense of the story. And it may well in the case of the burning bush.
I’m working on the God attack now. Weird.
Excellent article KK.
It never occured to me before: the absurdity of 2 midwives for over half a milion women.
What had occured to me was the absurdity of Moses’ plan to save him – the odds were massively against anybody finding him before the crocodiles ate him. And the Pharoh’s daughter found him – I mean, what ARE the odds of that!
As far as I see religious idiosynchrasies like prayer, mass, removal of shoes, face painting, etc., it has less to do with the will of God(s), but rather a self-imposed servitude stemming from the doubt that It exists at all and the fear that not pleasing Him (in case He does exist) might land you in a bad place when we die – as you put it, it’s simply the fear of death!
This has quickly become one of my favorite blogs. I think it should be required reading for all Sunday School students.
The main problem is that the people that SHOULD be reading this won’t go near it with a barge pole. The same with any book with Dawkins on the cover.
You end up purely entertaining those of us that already know it’s a load of old guff. Though you are giving me plenty of ammunition for the next time I end up in an argument with someone about the ridiculousness of The Book.
Though I have to wonder how we can get this fantastic writing out there to a wider, less rational audience.
Thank for the fantastic compliment. That will certainly make my entire week. I would love reach a wider audience but for the moment, I’m reluctant to advertise much more until I can get a few more posts complete. I would likely have another post already but for the WordPress iphone app which decided to go all schizo on me and delete about two hours worth of work. It’s obvious God is against my plan of atheist domination of the internet. He obviously fears my power.
Background info: I’m an atheist, brought up by Anglican parents and taught at an Anglican school till the age of 18.
The names thing – often names in the Bible mean things, so they could be a bit more like titles than first names, or like second names, or names with different levels of formality. Or it could just be the conflation of several accounts of Moses’ life and people couldn’t agree on the name (oral tradition after all – not that the literalists will consider this).
About worship, the point about God is that He is vastly superior to humans – He is divine whereas we are mere mortals. The abasement is to remind us of God’s superiority, because otherwise we might get cocky, think we can do better that/without God, blah blah blah. Arguably there are better ways of reminding us of our imperfections (hell surely we’re confronted with them every day even without all the religious rigmarole) but that, allegedly, is one of the reasons for worship of this kind.
As for population numbers – we know the Bible’s bad at figures, all those astronomical ages and obsession with 40 days, etc. I wonder if 600,000 has special significance.
Great blog. I became an atheist last year in October, after growing up as a Christian; it’s nice to have something like this come along — nice timing.
I look forward to more.
Rob Crompton said something above about monotheism beginning in the post-elithic period, but I say the writers of the bible wanted to create a monotheism and failed. We, as humans, need to view God as something similar to ourselves. We always have. The writers of the bible tried to develop a good and all-powerful individual God. But if God is like us, plus is all-powerful and all-good, how do we explain the evil (evil as in sinful desires) within ourselves? Because, since God is like us he must have evil within him as well.
No! It can’t be. We must create a Devil to explain it, some sort of seperate deity. Fuck it, we also need a guy with real-life experience on earth, Blam we got Jesus! Hell, let’s give the writers of the bible some divinity as well for credibility, Whamo the Holy Spirit! Ah . . . the trinity of failed monotheism and a singular evil spirit for a total of at least four Gods and a polytheistic religion.
Little bit ‘o’ a rant – Sorry
Then again, perhaps the princess Pharoah’s daughter suddenly discovered why she had been putting on all that weight for the last nine months or so, and needed a jolly good story to tell daddy….
Which might explain the comparative acceptance at Pharoah’s court, and even the propensity for leading people
Of course. The oldest and most basic reason of all is the most likely. Sex and shame are great motivators. Did you ever think of the virgin birth in this same light. It was God… Yeah, that’s the ticket… God did it! The old maxim is truer than ever. Everyone lies about sex.