THE CATHOLIC APPROACH TO BIBLICAL STUDIES


Outline of series

     Session 1: History of biblical studies in the Catholic Church,
including Divino Afflante Spiritu and "The Interpretation of the
Bible in the Church."  Illustration of historical-critical approach
from the Old Testament (Exodus 14: the crossing of the Reed Sea,
as an example of source criticism; and Exodus 20, the Ten
Commandments, as an example of moral development).

     Session 2: The formation and nature of the gospel tradition
as an example of Christian composition.  Research into the
historical Jesus as an anchor of Christian theology.

     Session 3: The infancy narratives in the gospel according to
Luke as an example of theological reflection on the redemptive work
of Jesus.

     Session 4: The infancy narratives in the gospel according to
Matthew as an example of Christian Old Testament interpretation.


Session 1

History

     Scripture scholarship has a long tradition in the Church. 
Early Greek and Latin Fathers like Origen and Jerome tried to
establish the accuracy of the text and to reconcile conflicting
passages.  John Chrysostom in the East and Augustine and Ambrose
in the West combined spiritual insight with systematic study of
biblical texts in their extensive homilies and commentaries.  In
the Middle Ages, Hugh of St. Victor and Thomas Aquinas developed
a sound methodology for the use of Scripture.  The first modern
critical studies of the Bible began during the Renaissance, and by
the time of the Reformation, there were scholarly commentaries by
both Catholics and Protestants on almost every book of the Bible. 

     From then on the lead was taken by Protestant scholars. 
Source criticism developed toward the end of the 18th century,
followed by form criticism, redaction and composition criticism,
and various other types of literary analysis.  But in 1943, Pope
Pius XII issued his encyclical, Divino Afflante Spiritu, which for
the first time allowed and encouraged Catholic Scripture scholars
to bring all the tools of language, history, archaeology, and
literary criticism to bear upon the texts of the Bible, and
strongly insisted on the study of literary forms in the Bible as
the key to the interpretation of it.  In 1964 the "Instruction on
the Historical Truth of the Gospels" specifically espoused
explicitly the form-critical and redaction-critical methods of
interpretation and spoke of three distinct stages in the
development of the gospel tradition: what Jesus did and said, what
his followers said about him, and what the evangelists wrote.  In
1965, the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation of Vatican II
formally adopted this method of interpretation.

     In 1993, the Pontifical Biblical Commission, consisting of 19
Catholic Scripture scholars, was asked to prepare a statement on
the interpretation of biblical texts on the 100th anniversary of
Leo XIII's encyclical Providentissimus Deus and the 50th
anniversary of Pius XII's Divino Afflante Spiritu.  After
discussing the state of the question--namely, that readers today
have to project themselves back 20 or 30 centuries to understand
the words and deeds of which the Bible speaks, and that with the
advances in knowledge in modern times it is impossible to return
to a pre-critical level of interpretation--the commission first
discusses various methods and approaches that have been used in
understanding the Bible.  Here it states clearly and emphatically
(I. A.) that the historical-critical method is the indispensable
method for the scientific study of the meaning of the Bible as of
any ancient text.

     It presents a brief history of the development of the
historical-critical method and the principles on which it is based,
and then describes the various steps it uses: textual criticism,
linguistic analysis, form criticism, tradition criticism, and
redaction criticism.  

     While affirming that the historical-critical method is the
necessary first step to understanding the Bible, it grants that no
scientific method is fully adequate to comprehend the biblical
texts in all their richness.  So it then examines (I. B.) other
methods of literary analysis that have proved fruitful in recent
times, including rhetorical, narrative, and semiotic (structural)
analysis.  It finds that these are insufficient because they
consider each writing in the Bible in isolation, so it moves on to
approaches based on tradition (I. C.), including the canonical
approach, the approach through Jewish traditions of interpretation,
and the approach by the history of the influence of the text, as
well as approaches that use the human sciences of sociology,
cultural anthropology, and psychology (I. D.) and approaches that
grow out of modern political and other contexts, in particular the
liberationist approach and the feminist approach (I. E.).

     Then it addresses the problem of fundamentalism and argues
that a literalist interpretation that fails to take account of the
historical origins and development of the Bible is wrong and
positively dangerous, for it is attractive to people who look to
the Bible for ready answers to the problems of life.  It can
deceive these people, offering them interpretations that are pious
but illusory, instead of telling them that the Bible does not
necessarily contain an immediate answer to each and every problem
we face today.  The commission goes so far as to say that
fundamentalism is a kind of intellectual suicide; it injects into
life a false certitude; it confuses the divine substance of the
Bible with what in fact are its human limitations.

     The basic problem with fundamentalism, they point out, is that
this refuses to take the historical character of biblical
revelation into account; it refuses to admit that the inspired word
of God has been expressed in human thought and language and not
dictated by the holy Spirit; it pays no attention to literary
forms; it claims inerrancy for historical events or supposedly
scientific truth; it historicizes material that never claimed to
be historical; it considers historical everything that is reported
or recounted with verbs in the past tense, failing to take the
necessary account of symbolic or figurative meaning.  It certainly
does not take into account the development of the Gospel tradition
and how the New Testament took form within the Christian church;
it confuses the final stage of this tradition (what the evangelists
wrote) with the initial stage (the words and deeds of Jesus); it
neglects the way the early Christians came to a progressive insight
into the person and role of Jesus and thus misrepresents the very
nature of the Gospel and separates the Bible from the ongoing
tradition of the Christian community.

     This first section is the heart and soul of the document.
Section II deals with hermeneutical questions arising from various
philosophical systems (A) or exegetical practices (B), where it
argues that while written texts are open to a plurality of
meanings, the literal sense must always be the basis for any
spiritual or allegorical interpretation.  

     Section III discusses the characteristics of Catholic
interpretation, (A) that the Bible itself often presents later
interpretations of earlier texts, especially the NT understanding
the OT in light of their experience of the Christ event; and (B)
the historical formation of the biblical canon, the exegesis of the
church fathers, and the roles of various members of the church
today in the interpretation of the Scriptures, spelling out in
detail (C) the responsibilities of the professional biblical
scholar in research, teaching, and publication.  Then it discusses
(D) the relationship of biblical studies with other theological
disciplines, including systematic and moral theology.

     Finally, Section IV discusses the use of the Bible in the life
of the church, advocating actualization and inculturation within
the living tradition of the community of faith through liturgy,
lectio divina, pastoral ministry, and ecumenism.  All of our
biblical scholarship must be directed to bringing out the life-
giving value of the Bible for communities of believers today.


Introductory Bibliography

                          INTRODUCTIONS

     Bernhard W. Anderson.  Understanding the Old Testament.  4th
ed.  Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1986.

     Howard Clark Kee, Franklin W. Young, Karlfried Froehlich. 
Understanding the New Testament.  3rd ed.  Ibid., 1973.

     Joseph Jensen, O.S.B.  God's Word to Israel.  Rev. ed. 
Wilmington, DE: Glazier, 1982.

     Bart D. Ehrman.  The New Testament: A Historical Introduction
to the Early Christian Writings.  2nd ed., New York: Oxford, 2000.

     Joseph A. Fitzmyer, S.J.  A Christological Catechism: New
Testament Answers.  Rev. ed.  New York/Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1991.

                          TRANSLATIONS

     New American Bible

     New Revised Standard Version

     New International Version

                          COMMENTARIES

     Anchor Bible.  40+ vols.  New York: Doubleday, 1964-.

     The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, ed. R. E. Brown, J. A.
Fitzmyer, R. E. Murphy.  Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1990.

     Peake's Commentary on the Bible, ed. M. Black, H. H. Rowley. 
London: Nelson, 1965.

     The Interpreter's One-Volume Commentary on the Bible.  Ibid.,
197l.

     A New Catholic Commentary on Holy Scripture, ed. R. C. Fuller,
L. Johnston, C. Kearns.  London: Nelson, 1969.

                          DICTIONARIES

     The Oxford Companion to the Bible, ed. Bruce M. Metzger &
Michael D. Coogan.  Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press,
1993.

     Dictionary of the Bible, ed. John L. McKenzie, S.J. 
Milwaukee: Bruce, 1965.


Value of the historical-critical approach 

     The historical-critical approach has proved to have at least
the following distinct advantages: (1) it is a liberating
experience, (2) it purifies our faith, and (3) it should enhance
our spiritual life.

It is a liberating experience

     Living a good Christian life is hard enough without saddling
ourselves with a lot of excess baggage.  There has been an
explosion of knowledge and the development of a scientific method
and a historical consciousness over the last couple of centuries. 
By applying a historical-critical analysis to the biblical
narrative, we are being  intellectually honest and will be better
able to integrate our understanding of Christian faith with our
knowledge in other areas.

     How do we do this?    First, we have to learn what literary
forms or genres are used in the Bible.  The Bible is like a
library.  If we wander into the fiction section when we're looking
for history, we're going to be very misled.  This is similar to
what creationists do with the great foundational stories of
Genesis, taking as a scientific theory competing with that of
evolution what is myth meant to give voice to the deep issues of
the human condition.  This is what fundamentalists, inside and
outside the Catholic church, do with the New Testament when they
cavalierly say "Jesus said this" or "Jesus did this" when the
sayings or stories in question derive from an early Christian
community expressing its understanding of the Christ event and
advocating its interpretation.

     Once we see how these stories developed and what they meant
in their original historical and cultural context, then we begin
to have the liberating experience promised to a Christian believer
by the author of the Fourth Gospel, "You will come to know the
truth, and the truth will set you free."  Free from what?  From
misinterpretations of the Bible that have been rampant throughout
the Christian centuries, none of which have ever been the official
teaching of the Church, but many of which have spread far and wide
in popular piety. 

     These include distorted beliefs in everything from the time
of the second coming to the nature of the afterlife and include
especially moral questions.  For instance, the OT concept of a holy
war with its strange combination of brutality and piety inspired
Augustine's just war theory and led to the Crusades and other wars
now often considered  antithetical to the authentic Christian
message.  

     Other famous historical misunderstandings based on the Bible
are the anti-Semitism of the Christian church that resulted in the
segregation, demonization, and persecution of Jews throughout the
centuries.  This of course reached its ultimate horror in the
Holocaust during World War II.  The Christian treatment of Muslims,
from the 12th century Crusades to driving the Moors out of Spain,
has not been much better.

     And then there is the history of slavery practiced by
Christians, often justified again by appeal to the Bible.  Even
religious orders like my beloved Society of Jesus apparently
justified their practice of owning slaves.

     A current problem for us is sexism.  In the ancient Near East,
women had few rights.  They were basically property owned by men. 
When the Bible is viewed in its historically patriarchal context,
one is better able to distinguish between what is an integral
aspect of our tradition and what is culturally conditioned.

It purifies our faith 

     What are we supposed to believe today?  By constantly going
back to the Bible, we can learn to separate the most essential
elements of Christian faith from accretions that may have developed
over the centuries.  Not that we can base our faith on what we are
able to know about the historical Jesus, for that is comparatively
little.  But in the New Testament we have the earliest and most
authentic inspired records of the Christian tradition.  

     By returning ad fontes, we can come to a new and deeper
understanding of our faith.  We may now look upon Jesus with a new
vision, enriched and cleansed by history, and with a new sense of
being able to relate to him in faith.  We can come to appreciate
the Christ of the gospels in a more profound way perhaps than the
Christ of catechism formulae, the Christ of theology, the Christ
of art, or the Christ of popular devotion.

     Modern Catholic biblical scholarship has established that the
gospels are not eyewitness reports or impartial unbiased historical
sources.  They are not, strictly speaking, accurate records of the
words and deeds of Jesus, but rather confessional documents that
grew up in liturgical contexts in various Christian communities. 
They are marvelous testimonials to the belief of second- and third-
generation Christian communities.  They present interpretations and
impressions of Jesus.  And they do preserve historical tradition. 
Even though they do not provide us with secure knowledge about the
precise words and deeds of Jesus, they give us pictures of Jesus
interpreted by the living faith of the early church.

     The gospels are an inspired record of the faith of the early
church concerning its Lord.  We can capture in substance the
impression made by Jesus on those who were with him.  The image of
Jesus is striking and original.  The teaching of Jesus is
consistent and comes across loud and clear.  The gospels call us
to follow him.  They accost us, challenge us, invite us to make an
all-or-nothing commitment.  

It should enhance our spiritual life

     By using a historical-critical approach to biblical studies,
we can actually enhance our prayer life.  There is a danger at
first that one will tend to demythologize the Bible so much
intellectually that one loses much of its richness and meaning in
meditation and prayer.  But if you stick with it, you soon reach
a post-critical stage in which, for instance in contemplating the
gospels, you realize that these are pictures of Jesus, impressions
of Jesus.  You realize that their emphasis is not on the actual
words and deeds of Jesus but on their meaning, namely, the value
of his life, suffering, death, and resurrection for us.  They
proclaim Jesus as Lord and Savior in the language and spirit of the
early church.  And so they call us to experience this Christ in
faith in our own language and spirit.

     Obviously, not everyone has to be a Scripture scholar to get
the most out of the Bible.  Christians throughout the ages have
found much meaning and inspiration through loving contemplation of
stories without any scientific knowledge of their origin and
nature.  But the more one knows about the Bible, the more one can
appreciate God's plan of salvation and especially the person of
Jesus.

     Perhaps because the gospels are pictures of Jesus, they
portray his character more vividly than dry historical records,
just like a good portrait often captures a person's character in
a way that a photograph does not.

Illustration from the Old Testament

     Some of our favorite stories are found in the first eleven
chapters of the book of Genesis.  Analysis of literary sources
through style and language enables us to see, for instance, that
the stories of the creation of the world in seven days in chapter
one and of the creation of man and woman in the garden in chapter
two come from separate traditions, written down about five
centuries apart.

     The stories themselves reflect different interests.  The story
in chapter one, from the Priestly tradition, that reached its final
form during or after the Babylonian exile, presents the example of
God creating for six days and resting on the seventh as reason to
observe the Sabbath.  The story in chapter two, from a much more
ancient tradition that is called the Yahwist tradition because it
uses the personal name of Israel's god right from the very
beginning, attempts to explain the origin of evil.  The god of the
Hebrews was Yahweh alone, and he was good.  So how could they
explain the presence of evil in the world?

     They blamed it on human beings.  So what we have in this story
is a parable of human origins.  In the beginning man, woman, sex,
and nature are all good; then comes an assertion of independence,
followed in chapter three by curses appropriate to each
participant: the man in his work, the woman in childbearing, the
serpent (symbol of Canaanite worship) in subjection to Israel.  

     In usual oriental storytelling fashion, many other questions
are answered by this story: why there is attraction between the
sexes; why a snake crawls on its belly; why humans have an aversion
for snakes; why there is pain in childbirth; why there is often
frustration in work; why we wear clothes; and why we die.  At
another level, the story is a polemic against the role of woman in
ancient Near eastern society, downgraded as a person, but deified
in her sexual aspects, especially in the fertility rites of the
Canaanites among whom the Hebrews were settling at the time of the
composition of the story.

     The next eight chapters of Genesis continue to describe the
turning away from God and consequent alienation within the human
community that will only be reversed with the call of Abraham in
chapter twelve and the formation of a new community, which will
develop into God's chosen people.  

     Alienation within the human community is symbolized by the
story of Cain and Abel in chapter four.  In an earlier form, this
story expressed the animosity between the nomadic shepherds (the
Hebrews) and the sedentary farmers (the Canaanites) among whom they
settled.  The author's interest is to show that civilization and
culture are always accompanied by violence, greed, and lust.  Cain
built the first city; his descendants included Jubal, the father
of musicians, and Tubal-cain, a forger of metals.  The penalties
for Cain's sin were alienation from the earth, expulsion from God's
immediate presence, and further estrangement, violence, and fear
among all people.

     This is followed by the story of the near-universal
destruction of the human race at the time of Noah and the flood. 
It portrays God's judgment in the affairs of history mixed with
concern for our future.  It owes much to similar Babylonian myths. 
Many peoples had a myth of the near-universal destruction of the
human race; this myth took different forms according to differing
geographical and climatic conditions.  

     For instance, in Egypt, where the Nile used to overflow its
banks gently each year and irrigate the parched earth along its
banks, assuring fertility for farmers, a flood could never be
thought of as anything but beneficent; there the destruction was
accomplished by the hand of a Destroying Angel (mentioned in Exod
12:23).  In other lands where there was a lot of volcanic activity,
the myth took the form of fire and brimstone.  But Mesopotamia was
subject to periodic devastating floods of the Tigris and Euphrates
rivers, and so their myth of the universal destruction of the human
race took the form of a deluge.  This is reflected in the
Mesopotamian Gilgamesh epic as well as in the Old Testament.

     No sooner does Noah and his family survive the flood than he
becomes a tiller of the soil.  Notice again the antipathy of
nomadic society to agriculture.  As described in chapter nine of
the book of Genesis, Noah plants a vineyard, the characteristic
product of Canaanite agriculture.  He makes wine, becomes drunk,
and is involved in taboo sexual practices.  Again we have a polemic
against the depravity of Israel's enemy Canaan, here personified
as a son of Noah and cursed into servitude to Shem.  The whole
story reflects the Hebrew antipathy to the role of wine and
fertility rites in Canaanite culture and religion.

     The turning away from God is concluded in the story of the
Tower of Babel in Genesis 11.  This story attempts to explain the
origin of different peoples and languages, the origin of the city
of Babylon, its name, and the existence of an unfinished or fallen
Babylonian tiered temple-tower called a ziggurat.  But its main
point is to emphasize the pride of human beings to build a culture
of their own making without the benefit of God.  This additional
assertion of independence results in further alienation and
division in the human race and the complete breakdown of
communication, which is to be reversed in the call of Abraham in
the following chapter and then ultimately, in the Christian view,
with the coming of the Spirit upon the early Christian community
in the form of tongues.

     The rest of the book of Genesis, consisting of stories and
legends about the patriarchs, including Joseph in Egypt, reflects
the historical circumstances of the migrations of the Amorites,
tribes from the Arabian desert, first up into the fertile areas of
Mesopotamia, then north as far as the Armenian mountains (the
biblical Haran, the hometown of Abraham), then down through what
is now Syria and Palestine.  Various settlements sprang up along
their route.  

     Eventually, in times of famine, groups of these nomads, called
collectively Habiru, or "Wanderers," went down to fertile Egypt in
search of food.  Foreign-dominated Egypt at this period had an
open-door policy, and nomads were welcome to come and settle there,
especially in the Delta region.  But with the overthrow of the
foreign Hyksos rulers in the middle of the sixteenth century B.C.
and the accompanying rise of nationalist feeling, many of these
foreign settlers were enslaved by the Egyptians and formed labor
crews to build monuments and cities for Pharaoh and his people.  

     This is the situation reflected in the opening chapters of the
book of Exodus.  The new king who arose in Egypt, who did not know
Joseph, probably refers to Ahmose I, the first Pharaoh of the 18th
Dynasty, and to his successors who enslaved the Hebrews.  According
to the story, the first king of the 19th Dynasty, Seti I, was
especially harsh on the Hebrews, and legend has it that he ordered
all male children to be exposed to death.  

     Christian reflections on this story are found in Matthew's
infancy narratives in the story of the massacre of the innocents;
Christians saw in Jesus a new Moses, the founder of a new Israel. 
Jewish commentaries on the book of Exodus also have the birth of
Moses and his role as deliverer of Israel announced to Pharaoh, the
terror of the Egyptians when the prediction becomes known, the
consultation of Pharaoh with his sages and the decree for the
massacre, and finally the escape of Moses from the general
slaughter.  The story is richly embellished by popular legend, as
Moses is placed in a wicker basket daubed with bitumen and pitch,
just as Sargon I, the founder of the kingdom of Akkad, had been
some ten centuries earlier.

     Moses is pictured as identifying himself with his people and
taking action against every unjust aggressor.  After killing an
Egyptian taskmaster, Moses fled Egypt, defended the daughters of
the high priest and king of a bedouin nation who were being
harassed by marauding shepherds, and married into the family.  One
day, while communing with Yahweh on Mt. Sinai and reflecting on the
plight of his fellow slaves in Egypt, Moses felt that Yahweh was
calling him to help his people escape from slavery.  

     The opportunity seemed to present itself with the death of
Pharaoh Seti I.  Before his successor, Ramsses II, could establish
himself upon the throne, Moses returned to Egypt and through his
spokesman, his brother Aaron, told his people about the very
powerful god who would help them escape from slavery if they would
go and worship him on his sacred mountain.  And so, according to
the story, a group of slaves did escape and went to this mountain
and there made a covenant with Yahweh.

     The story of their escape from Egypt in chapters 5-15 of the
book of Exodus is a drama that has stirred minds and hearts
throughout the centuries.  This is the confessional language of
worship, a story told from generation to generation at Passover
time, a story to be read and relished with religious empathy and
imagination.  

     First come the plagues of Egypt.  The ancient Hebrews saw the
hand of God in natural events of life--in the spring rains
promising a good harvest, in the birth of a child insuring
continuation of a name or family.  So also in the natural events
connected with the annual inundation of the Nile, which may have
occurred at the time of the Exodus, the Hebrew people recognized
the hand of God.  They were signs of God's particular care for his
own chosen people.

     As in the book of Genesis, we can distinguish various
traditions underlying the description of these events.  There are
little giveaways that often tell which tradition is being followed. 
As mentioned above, the oldest tradition, written down probably
during a literary awakening at the time of Solomon in the mid tenth
century, always refers to God by the personal name Yahweh, and so
is called the Yahwist tradition, whereas another tradition, written
down some two centuries later and coming from the northern Kingdom,
normally refers to him prior to the covenant at Sinai by the
generic term for God, Elohim, and so is called the Elohist
tradition.  

     There are other clues, too.  The Elohist tradition attempts
to extol the role of Moses because it derives from the popular
tradition of the old Tribal Confederacy which glorified the events
of the Mosaic period, and raised Moses to the level of a special
prophet; so that when the Yahwist tradition ascribes a phenomenon
directly to Yahweh or to a natural cause, such as the east wind,
the Elohist tradition has Moses raise his rod and command such and
such to occur.

  The third tradition in the book of Exodus is the same Priestly
tradition to which the first chapter of Genesis belonged.  This
tradition glorifies the person of Aaron, the founder of the
priestly order; so that what is attributed to Moses in the Elohist
tradition is usually attributed to Aaron in the Priestly.  

     Each subsequent tradition also tends to embellish the
phenomena.  For example, let's take the first plague described in
Exod 7:14-24.  In the oldest tradition, Yahweh (which is translated
"the LORD" with all four letters capitalized in almost all English
Bibles) tells Moses to go to Pharaoh "in the morning" (another
favorite expression in this tradition) and tell him, "Yahweh (or:
the LORD) says, 'Let my people go, that they might serve me in the
wilderness....  I will strike the water that is in the Nile and it
shall be turned to blood, and the fish in the Nile shall die, and
the Nile shall become foul, and the Egyptians will be loathe to
drink water from the Nile.'" And so it happened.  

     But in the Elohist tradition, found in inserts interwoven
among passages from the other traditions, we find God telling Moses
to "take in your hand the rod which was turned into a serpent," a
magical element popular in this tradition, and tell Pharaoh, "I
will strike the water that is in the Nile 'with the rod that is in
my hand' and it shall be turned to blood."  When we get to the
Priestly tradition, first we have the role of Aaron as the chief
actor: "And the LORD (i.e., Yahweh) said to Moses, 'Say to Aaron,
"Take your rod and stretch out your hand over the waters of
Egypt..."'" and secondly, a popular embellishment typical of this
tradition--not only over the waters of the Nile, but "over their
rivers, their canals, and their ponds, and all their pools of water
that they may become blood; and there shall be blood throughout all
the land of Egypt, both in vessels of wood and in vessels of
stone."  What had begun as a natural phenomenon. the darkening of
the Nile with silt at the time of the annual inundation, became a
miraculous act by which all the water in Egypt turned to blood!

     These same literary tendencies are found in the story of the
crossing of the Reed Sea.  (Red Sea, the old translation, goes back
to an ancient Greek mistranslation of the Hebrew yam suph, which
means a papyrus marsh.)  Here in chapter 14 of Exodus, the basic
Yahwist tradition pictures Moses telling the people that Yahweh
would fight for them, and then the pillar of cloud (representing
Yahweh) separated them from the pursuing Egyptians, and "Yahweh
drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night, and made the
sea dry land," that is, because of a prevailing east wind, the
papyrus marsh dried up so that the Hebrews could pass through on
foot, but when the Egyptian army followed in chariots, "Yahweh in
the pillar of fire and of cloud looked down upon the army of the
Egyptians, and discomfited the army of the Egyptians, clogging
their chariot wheels so that they drove heavily; and the Egyptians
said, 'Let us flee from before Israel; for Yahweh fights for them
against the Egyptians.'" 

     But the Elohist tradition attributes the drying up of the
marsh not to the east wind but to Moses and his rod, "Lift up your
rod, and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it, that the
people of Israel may go on dry ground through the sea."  And
instead of the pillar of fire and of cloud representing Yahweh, God
of Israel, we have the "angel of God" separating them from the army
of the Egyptians.  And then Moses stretched out his hand over the
sea again, and the sea returned to its normal flow.  Already there
is a major change as Moses becomes the chief actor.  

     When we get to the Priestly tradition, we have the version
familiar to us from the movie "The Ten Commandments" of Cecil B.
DeMille, where the people of Israel go through the sea on dry
ground, "the waters being a wall to them on their right hand and
on their left," and "the waters returned and covered the chariots
and the horsemen and all the host of Pharaoh that had followed them
into the sea; not so much as one of them remained."  What had begun
as a celebration of Yahweh, God of Israel, helping his people
escape across a papyrus marsh by sending a prevailing east wind
that dried it up sufficiently for them to cross on foot while the
Egyptians following in chariots got stuck in the mud became a
glamorized story in which all the Egyptians perished in the sea,
including the Pharaoh.  What we have therefore is religious poetry,
inspired and preserved in liturgical celebration, told and retold
as Jews throughout the centuries relived the birth of their nation.

     The Exodus from Egypt is followed by the covenant at Sinai. 
Various signs occurred en route from Egypt to Sinai, among them the
manna and the quail.  Manna is something like honey, a sweet,
sticky substance, the product of insects that feed upon tamarisk
bushes.  It may be found in the Sinai peninsula today.  It lies
like dew on the ground in the early morning, but evaporates when
the sun comes out, forming granules like sugar.  The story of the
quail reflects the migratory habits of these birds.  After long
flights, they fall to the ground utterly exhausted, so in fact they
lie there at one's feet ready to be picked up.  These may be
natural phenomena--but to an ancient people, wandering without food
in the desert, the manna and the quail they stumbled upon were
signs of God's special care and providence for them.

     When they arrived at Sinai, they made a covenant with Yahweh. 
They modeled this covenant upon contemporary political treaties,
specifically, upon fifteenth-century Hittite suzerainty treaties
between a vassal state and an overlord.  Israel's covenant with
Yahweh begins like all these treaties with an identification of the
overlord, in this case, "I am Yahweh, your God."  Then in the
treaties follows a historical prologue, reciting the benefits
conferred upon the subjugated state; here this runs, "... who
brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery." 

     Then in the treaties follow the stipulations or laws that the
vassal state pledges to obey.  In the Sinai covenant, the
stipulations are the Ten Commandments.  These are followed, as in
the treaties, by a series of blessings and curses, and finally the
treaty is inscribed on stone tablets and copies are deposited into
the archives of the contracting parties.  Breaking the tablets, as
Moses did when he came down from the mountain and saw the people
of Israel worshiping a golden calf, was a sign of abrogation of the
treaty or covenant.

     What was the original meaning of the Ten Commandments that are
found in chapter 20 of the book of Exodus?  A more basic question,
perhaps, is: Why are there ten?  I think it's a mnemonic device. 
We have ten fingers.  And as we have five fingers on each hand, so
also the commandments are divided into two sets.  The first five
(following the Hebrew enumeration, which is preserved in Protestant
Bibles) deal with relations between an inferior and a superior
being, that is, a human being and Yahweh.  The second set deal with
relations between equals, that is, between two human beings.  And
in each set, the commandments go in descending order from the most
important to the least.  

     Let's take the first hand.  The first commandment is,
literally, "Don't prefer any other god to me."  This means that at
the time of composition of these Ten Commandments, which could very
well be the thirteenth century B.C., the Hebrews were not yet
monotheists; they did not deny the existence of other gods, but
they had made a choice, based upon their Exodus experience: for
them there would be only one God, Yahweh, whom they would serve. 

     The second commandment is originally, "Don't make any graven
image of me; in later versions, it is expanded to refer to
constructing idols, but in the original it refers to Yahweh.  It
signifies that the Israelites already at this time had such a
spiritualized conception of Yahweh that they felt that he could not
be adequately represented by any statue.  

     But they had to have some sacred symbol of Yahweh, and so they
had the third commandment, "Don't pronounce my name."  This
commandment not to "Take the name of the Lord your God in vain" was
not primarily concerned with oaths or curses but meant that the
personal name of their God was to be held so sacred that the people
of Israel could never pronounce it, even in worship; and to the
present day an orthodox Jew will substitute "Adonai," the Hebrew
word for "Lord," or has-shem, "the name," whenever he comes upon
the sacred name Yahweh in readings from the Bible in synagogue. 
This commandment also served to keep people from using the name
Yahweh in magical formulae and thus seeming to manipulate him.  

     The fourth commandment is "Keep the sabbath," that is, worship
me at regular intervals.  And the fifth commandment, also dealing
with relations between an inferior and a superior being, is "Obey
your parents," that is, those who stand in the place of God.     

     The second set of commandments (the second hand) also go in
descending order, and deal with relations between equals.  The
sixth commandment (in the traditional enumeration) is: "Don't
kill."  The worst thing you can do to another is to take his or her
life.  This is followed by the seventh, "Don't commit adultery." 
This has more to do with life than sex.  The ancient Israelites did
not come to believe in personal life after death until perhaps the
time of the Maccabees ca. 165 B.C.  Earlier, life after death was
thought of as survival in the name and person of one's children;
and this seventh commandment gave the man the right to know who his
children were.  

     The eighth commandment, usually translated, "Don't steal,"
really means "Don't kidnap."  The next worst thing you could do to
another was to sell him into slavery.  The ninth commandment is,
"Don't bear false witness," that is, don't perjure.  It's very
minimalistic.  When you are called to testify in court, when the
good name and perhaps the property of your neighbor is at stake,
then you must tell the truth.  

     And finally, the last commandment, "Don't covet (which meant
"desire and take") your neighbor's house (which means property),"
and then his property is enumerated: "wife, manservant,
maidservant, ox, and ass."