Biblical Series Exodus Episode 3 Chaos and Order

thank you for joining us as we journey through the Great Book of Exodus and thank you very much the DW plus crew for having the vision and generosity of spirit to make this Exodus seminar produced at no small cost and substantial risk freely available to all who are interested on YouTube perhaps you might consider a daily wire Plus subscription it's a Bastion of free speech and we have great content there with much more to come we journeyed to Athens Rome and Jerusalem to film a four-part documentary series on Western civilization and have additionally recorded specials on marriage Vision the pitfalls and opportunities for adventure and masculinity all of which are exclusively available there these join many of the Beyond order public lectures that made up my recent tour and my extensive back catalog fully uncensored onward and upward [Music] s hello everyone we're on day three of this Exodus seminar brought together a number of Scholars from around the world and under the auspices of the production team of daily wire plus and thank you to them and thank you once again for all of you for coming I'll just introduce everyone um Douglas Headley Oz Guinness James Orr Greg hurwitz new arrival from yesterday Dennis Prager Stephen Blackwood Jonathan paggio so we stopped yesterday at the end of Exodus three and I'm just going to reprise that I was talking with Jonathan and James about the end of Exodus 3 and there's some uh details there they're not details there's some important issues that we have to pick up so I'll just read the last four verses of chapter three and then I'll defer to Jonathan God says to Moses and I have said I will bring you up out of the Affliction of Egypt referring to the Tyranny unto the land of the Canaanites hit Heights amorites pezzarites hivites and jebusites so land that's already occupied which we'll get to later unto a land flowing with milk and honey that's the paradisal vision for Hungry people and they shall hearken to thy voice and thou shalt Come Thou and the Elders of Israel unto the king of Egypt and sit and ye shall say unto him the Lord God of the Hebrews hath met with us and now let us go we beseech thee three days journey into the Wilderness that we may sacrifice to the Lord Our God and I am sure that the king of Egypt will not let you go no not by a mighty hand and I will stretch out my hand and smite Egypt with all my wonders which I will do in the midst thereof and after that he will let you go and I will give this people favor in the sight of the Egyptians and it shall come to pass that when you go you will not go empty but every woman it's every Jewish woman shall borrow of her neighbor and of her that sojourneth in her house jewels of silver and jewels of gold and raiment and ye shall put them upon your sons and upon your daughters and ye shall spoil the Egyptians so over to you Jonathan you talked about the importance of that Motif I think it's very important it needs to understand it narratively because this I think is an answer to the big discussion we had about asking the the women to kill their children there is a sense in which the Pharaoh wants to reduce the Israelites to potential that he can rule over and then what we see now is a kind of a flip an inversion where in fact Egypt will now become that which will provide potential to Israel as it leaves and it and it puts things in the right order at least narratively in the Scripture it puts it in the right order because this is difficult for some people to understand that Egypt is a is a son of ham Egypt is a is a son of the curse he's an outsider you would say he's one of those that has been ejected like Cain ejected from the world and acts in a way as a kind of strange stranger but also potential in which we can increase ourselves and this is where you see that actually happening and some of the church fathers they they explicitly talk about this as being the manner in which Christians or Believers can incorporate things from strange lands that can incorporate Greek Greek thinking or even with some poetry from other cultures or from your own our own ancient culture that you can spoil the Egyptians that it is possible to to bring some things in if it's just bring riches in from the past and from other cultures as long as it's done in the proper in the proper order that it doesn't so would it be in some sense because God in this story is the spirit that's calling the Israelites to Freedom that if you bring in the treasures in the service of the proper good then that becomes acceptable and then James over to you because well this is really just a footnote to what Jonathan's puts so so beautifully just just now um this motif of despoiling the Egyptians stealing from the Egyptians if we first see it in I think origin of Alexandra this is the just end of the second century uh third Century Augustine uses the idea as well he probably probably wasn't aware of of origin it becomes what is actually quite a challenging verse this sort of instruction to to steal particularly in light of the technology exactly right it's it's troubling troubling verse but it becomes a really central idea this this claim that that as Douglas was talking about yesterday that you can that you're licensed to explore Pagan philosophy and to take Pagan ideas to to sift through these ideas as uh uh abrahamic monotheism was so good at drawing in Hellenic ideas without being overwhelmed by them and we can see even we talked about yesterday Exodus 3 14 this this very pregnant philosophical metaphysical idea that I am I am that I am God God's being and his existence uh his Essence and his existence coming together in one Augustine says it's obvious that Plato must have read the books of the Books of Moses when he's writing about uh the the myth of the cave and he's writing about objective Transcendent reality and so on and this becomes a really important idea particularly in the second half of the first Millennium as we move into late Antiquity after the collapse of Rome you have the emergence of demonstration trees particularly on Benedict in 529 onwards the founding of the famous monastery Monte montecasino and there the idea is that you know the monks preserve not just Christian scriptures and Christian texts but also Pagan ones as well so in many ways it's this idea that it's okay to take Pagan wisdom and to preserve it and to cherish it to nurture it that that that this sort of verse licenses and and it does I just want to say one more thing it's important because we might think of this as just an allegorical flurry that this is just some kind of thing you put in the text but we have to notice that very soon that goal that the Egyptians have given the Israelites will be used to First make the golden calf and then later used to make the ornaments of the Tabernacle and so you can see exactly the potential that is taken from Egypt is now shown to be either corrupting if it's in the wrong order to make the idols of the Pagan Idols or then ultimately in service of God in order to make the ornaments of the Tabernacle so just two quick observations on that one of them is I'm struck again and again by the Revolutionary role of women constantly through Exodus like the women keep saving the day right whether it's the midwives whether it's the pharaoh's daughter or here like why would these women be the ones who are charged with going into the households and doing it and so well one of the best predictors of economic development in the developing world is the freedom and rights associated with women and there's a mythological uh similarity between women and that the foreign in some sense and so what you might say is that to the degree that a society is capable of the Patriarchs in a society are capable of attending to and valuing their own women who are other they're capable of valuing the other as such and it's and it speaks to security right to the the the lack of need to control women speaks to masculine security is one aspect but the other thing that struck me is is that the empathy here because empathy is an argument that is that let's say it's that it's ascendant in certain ways in the contemporary culture that might feel like in ways that are slightly corrupted but empathy used to true end can lead to change in evolution and revolutionary thinking and Revolution and that comes in through them and the strength of the women here is really remarkable because they do a whole bunch of things for no reason it kind of makes any sense politically based on the basis of that like the great feminine power the other thing I was going to say about the gold you're talking about Jonathan the ways that the gold is appropriated you know nobody ever says where they get their weapons when they finally have the weapons and so it's like I think that it's either two options if I'm looking at this as a thriller writer I mean one of it is that this gold and silver is forged into weapons that is taken from here you know or maybe they pulled it off the washed up bodies of the Egypt Egyptians right but there's the same idea right so so either way it's appropriated right it's forged into not just the the messaging the Tabernacle of God but also the forcefulness has to come in some ways for materials from the Egyptians there's another side of this I think is that's called psychological in a certain sense I think with these first three chapters have done for us has really sort of set out the whole drama of the human soul like the whole the whole drama of the spiritual life and you start in oppression and alienation um unable to get out of it yourself longing for resolution for homecoming for the for the promised land and you can't get there and so in a way I think the story this Exodus is of course precisely about God's work in moving us from uh from from Exile and from oppression to to to homecoming and resolution and nourishment um but I think there's a there's a side to this that is present in the the spoiling of the Egyptians there's also psychological and that is within that that drama of of of redemption or let's say or salvation there's you know it's not it's not like salvation it could be real true salvation if we forgot about everything we were before and you know if if somehow our sins and our sufferings our toils and tribulations that Define us is like this day today who I am and have been and we all carry these things with us certainly I am today and any day if those are somehow not part of where you end up in your resolution then it's not you that is saved and so there's a sense in which I think this is at least metaphorically the the the the jewels of the Egyptians are a way of saying that this time of repression and slavery will yet be turned into the promised land that's particularly relevant when you're trying to deal with something like the atrocious tyranny of the past it's like well even if it's Egypt and Egypt is all obviously cast as the tyrannical oppressor here that doesn't mean there aren't there isn't the gold that you could use to build the proper uh Tabernacle and their and there are also the proper weapons that can still be derived from it even if it's paste painted as the Tyranny itself so man I just made one concluding remark about this uh fascinating motif of spoiling the Egyptians and that is in relation to the notion of eurocentrism which of course we hear a lot about and there are many critiques of eurocentrism and yet one of the Striking aspects of European let's say Occidental culture I'm thinking of North American culture as part of that Occidental world of course is as a French philosopher recently has noted is that it is eccentric so this is a philosopher called homiprag and Remy Prague is very powerfully argued that because our ancestors in Europe for centuries were using Latin but Latin as a translation for sources either at The Fringe of Europe Greece or outside Europe Hebrew so that European culture was based on the sense that um even though as a monk in Monte carcino or elsewhere you might be using Latin that the Latin is a translation and it's a translation of the Greek or it's a translation of the Hebrew and he argues this is one reason why medievals took up Arabic so quickly because once it became clear that Arabic was a way of actually getting to Greek more more accurate that was greeted with enthusiasm so Bragg's idea is that unlike say the indic tradition where the the sanskrita the Sanskrit is the elegant tongue it's the that is the holy language or even an Arabic where because of course that's the language of of the Prophet um European culture is and European Western culture is is based on this idea that its sources are without um so that the very idea of an ethnocentric Occidental culture is um a very problematic notion and and I think here this notion of the the espousing the spoiling of the Egyptian The Taking of the the foreign and using it uh in a positive way I think is extend that too to some degree to the scientific Endeavor one of the things you commented on before we recorded today James was the fact that there's an insistence that God is a Transcendent unity and not merely something that's tribal and that is lurking in some sense everywhere and so that would be in the stranger and the Foreigner but it also means that God is in some real sense lurking in the material world and the natural object and so just as you can look outside your culture for the treasure that the stranger and the Foreigner might possess you can look outside your own material presuppositions for the Transcendent knowledge that the natural world would hold and that's actually no there's a there's a historical tradition that Christianity and and the scientific Endeavor were at each other's throats but it's a Preposterous notion if you look into it more deeply underneath all that is the insistence that it's meat and good to encounter the natural world and to investigate it because it contains Revelations as well there's a reason young spent the second half of his career on Alchemy right or was it his whole second half pretty much and What's the phrase I always forget the phrase that means the thing of greatest value in circuliness internship yes what you most need will be found where you least want to look that's right right which is well that's that's that's a phrase that's you can think about that in relationship to the crucifixion too if you regard it as the in some senses the symbol of the ultimate Union of tragedy and malevolence it's exactly there is the least place you want to look and it's it's the dragon that contains the gold or maybe the Tyrant that that contains the treasure as well that's like overcoming a giant too or the very common mythology the golden resources of the Egyptian slave holders yes exactly that exactly one of the early criticisms of monotheism in in certainly by Pagan philosophers was the the monotheism secularizes nature that is to say it rids nature of gods of magic if you've got a creationist framework that is you say you've got you've got a framework in which all of reality is understood to be the outcome of a single purposive supremely rational or powerful being then you don't need to to explain earthquakes by appealing to Poseidon there aren't going to be any more sort of nymphs in the forests as it were all of that gets gets banished this is a sort of common criticism and um certainly I think it's it's true that it also brings with it this idea that the nature is is legible that is to say all of nature is legible and not animated but legible because it de-animated yeah it reflects the kind of a single creative blueprint of a single source of of a single kind of cognitive uh source of subjectivity a unified Consciousness um I mean you know play in Plato's Heaven you've got all of these different uh things existing you've got numbers you've got propositions you've got truths and forms and all this sort of thing what Phil of Alexandria does in in the first century and what Augustine does later in the fourth century is to as it would give a kind of change of metaphysical address is he where he says we've got to sort of baptize Plato's Heaven we've got a move all of this all everything that's in Plato's have an end to the Divine mind and that makes that's a much more natural philosophical home for thoughts and propositions and numbers and so on so let me offer a word on the spoiling of the Egyptians which I don't think you would have necessarily considered without the Hebrew the Hebrew note most of your translations say borrow is that correct the King James and some others so first of all notice you it doesn't say take it really doesn't say borrow either and this will Fascinate You the Hebrew is you will ask I mean and it's in modern Hebrew as well this is not a difficult word it means question to ask number two in light of your point about the women I think that that adds to the point that I'm making it's uh it's much less intimidating to have the women get the jewelry than the men so so in effect what is happening is also the women will ask for for valuables is not the same as men will take so I just wanted to note that because I think I think it's relevant to what the text wants to say isn't there another point in tennis too that the rabbis say that later an indentured servants are freed the master gives them something as they go out that's right and this is the Lord's doing it for his people as they leave slavery and by the way on your point about the de-sacralizing nature all of the plagues except for the tenth are against nature gods of Egypt are you looking to dive deeper into the entire Bible look no further than the Hallow app the number one Prayer app in the world featuring an entire category of content to help you dive deeper into prayer and meditation on the Bible by studying the Bible you'll gain a deeper appreciation for the power of Storytelling symbolism and metaphor enriching your understanding of literature across different genres go through the Bible in a year with father Mike Schmitz or hear the Bible narrated by renowned actors like Jonathan Rooney from the chosen or Jim Caviezel from Sound of Freedom hallow has over ten thousand audio guided prayers meditations and music to deepen your understanding and knowledge of the Bible the Halo app also helps you connect with a community of like-minded individuals sharing experiences insights and encouragement along your path to spiritual growth enrich your education and nurture your mind and soul today download the Hallow app at hallow.com Exodus 20 for 20 off your annual subscription that's hallow.com Exodus 20. and Moses answered and said but behold they will not believe me nor hearken unto my voice for they will say the Lord hath not appeared unto thee and the Lord said unto him what is that in thine hand and he said a rod staff a walking stick a pool and he said cast it on the ground and Moses casted on the ground and it it became a serpent and Moses fled from before it and the Lord said unto Moses put forth thine hand and take it by the tail and Moses put forth his hand and caught it and it once again became a rod in his hand well we there's a lot packed into that that's for sure um I'll just make a couple of comments and then it'll open up the staff of Moses and the staff of Aaron that that idea just never goes away after this introduction in the text and so a staff is something if you have a staff and you're the owner of a company the staff does your will that you rely on the staff as well and so and that meaning is it derivation from the same root idea if you're walking when you walk with a walking stick then you can lean on the stick and so while you're on the way you have something to lean on and so the rod is also a symbol of solidity and stability and tradition and then the rod the staff the tradition can turn into a snake and that means that what's solid and reliable and that you can use on your way can also transform itself suddenly into chaos so there's yin yang dichotomy there that emerges and then after all that and that's terrifying because when your tradition falls apart and the chaotic serpents emerge instead then that's terrifying and that's what happens to Moses but then God tells him take the serpent by the tail which by the way is the most dangerous way to grab a serpent because you grab them by the head and so if you have enough courage to grasp what's dangerous then you will become credible enough to be listened to and that's part of the under structure narrative that drives this in some sense this magic trick and then we see the motif of being exposed to the serpent as a Curative process replicated through itself through the text and we also know that the symbol that even modern Physicians use to to symbolize their healing power is the symbol of the rod and the staff which I believe in that cases of Greek origin right Escapist but there's a parallel there that's all definitely a parallel yeah yeah well the para well and is that historical replication is it archetypal representation it has the same Source has to be archetypal uh we'll see it more when we get to the to the to the serpent on the staff itself that story we can maybe talk about it then but it's definitely it's definitely a universal story but it's also it's also referring to The Serpent and the tree you know in terms of it's it's interesting because for Moses as we're thinking about him as the emergent hero and we're talking yesterday a lot about the fact that he he his ability to engage transformationally is one of the things that's defining his ability to see and hear God is what what illuminates God to him though God's already independent in Genesis as we discuss but the ability to transform the snake right into a staff again is the trans informational ability that means it's caused to lead right well that's the definition of the hero the hero does both he casts order into chaos and Chaos into order he's a mediating factor between the two that's right so it's I always think with the yin and yang everyone people forget the eyeballs and the eyeballs from here like Colossus of Rhodes astride right astride the line that's where you want to stand and so it's good from Evil per the tree the Garden of Eden but it's also chaos to order yeah I think cast order is actually a better way to under to understand it is that it's the rod to that which is flexible right a snake is it that's why it also says grab by the tail it's one making you want to understand that it's a tail it's something that moves and is flexible isn't solid like like a staff but you can understand it in terms of attention because that's actually how attention works it's like you have something undefined what do you do you mentally or physically grasp it and when it is what understands me that's exactly when CSA pointed that when he talked about children building their uh what do you what do you call those psychomotor schema to begin with so the basic pre conceptions of perception itself are the gripping element and so when children are trying to figure out how to see something and therefore how to conceptualize and perceive it they have that's why they people say sometimes look with your eyes and not with your hands right they'll say that to their little kids but their little kids are literally gripping the chaos of the world so that they can transform it into something stable and reliable so it's worth making the obvious point that you know the both the rod and the snake are symbols of sovereign pharonic Authority the the the Pharaohs would have had a snake in their headdress uh I think that there's even more than that not only the snake but the Pharaohs have a rod and a slice a fly SWAT and so the fly SWAT is also that tail that's why there's a rod and a tail so the symbolism is that Moses is being invested with a kind of counter Authority a kind of he's be becoming the leader of of anti-egypt so you have to be the master of the staff and the snake in order to lead well that's the snake that eats all the other snakes right right so that's the representation of his ability to so not so interesting that it's the snake right so he's the master of the chaos that eats all other chaos it's that when we get to it you'll see we think that it's the snakes but in my memory it's that it says that that Moses Rod ate the snakes of the oh yeah because that's that's how it works right it's the order that actually that contains it's actually like grasping the tail the the rod is going to consume this so it's a superordinate order that can consume all chaos yeah that's what Moses is standing for yes that's why he's an agent of the highest Authority but you can see that's the law itself like this is this is it's the it's the the law and the the the transgressions and so it's like in one moves it you know he's able to master like you said grab it and it and it comes back yeah and it's also the shepherd staff I guess the you know the the sort of imagery of him becoming the shepherd of his people and so the rod becomes the the the chasing away the Shepherds absolutely yeah that's right and defeating the Pharaohs what does a Shepherd use a rod for well I mean a shepherd's crook I guess a staff to reign in the Sheep is that also part of it to rescue the rescue the Sheep to lead the Sheep to round them up yeah well we should remember that when you were a Shepherd in that time that was actually a real man's job because they're Reliance and they like to eat sheep and so part of being a Shepherd was like fighting off lions are you implying that contemporary Shepherds aren't sufficient we have some contemporary Shepherds we didn't have a conversation with your doctor by the way the the order chaos thing is uh so I'm glad you raised it and I had not thought of it frankly in in these terms but it's it's from for me it's the central teaching of Genesis I always tell people I think Genesis 1 1 is the most important verse in the Bible but I think one two was the second most important everything was chaos and what God does for six days is make order out of chaos so and and we are we are living in the post god era and we are living in a chaotic era and I hope I'm not too contemporary by noting that men menstruate is a statement of chaos so again the the centrality of the significance of God well that's an anti-rod movement because derada himself said that his deconstructionism was aimed at fallow centricism it was foul logocentrisism but that that that that degeneration of those categories especially with regard to male and female that's not an accidental consequence of the system of ideas that's a central Target of of what he was called a focal attack and it is an attack on the rod fundamentally so I don't know I I I I I I I just forgive me I just want to make one other macro point because that's how my mind thinks uh I in a long many decades of of radio and speaking and so on I have not made the as much as I believe in God I truly do I have never found that Arguments for God's existence are nearly as effective or as important as Arguments for God's necessity and and that's that's that's the point that that I want to make here and we're all making here no God chaos you don't believe in God at least understand what the consequences of that non-belief are what's interesting what's interesting about that is we keep having these convert and the more I the more that I've been thinking about this in relation to my you know forays into the political or cultural world this is another consequence of how you align the moral with the Strategic and in some ways what you're saying is if you make a moral argument people don't even know why they think what they think so to come in and say to them you need to change your moral Outlook right what you're suggesting is and why I think that's more fruitful is it's a strategic approach and that's a way to lead people in and then they can decide how high up that hierarchy of understanding they want to move well you can you can look at this purely psychologically which I like to do as much as possible because I don't think you should bring God into the issue unless you have to in some sense um you either are aiming for something unified which means something at the Pinnacle and something that's the highest and superordinate and most valuable or you're not in which case perhaps you're aiming down or you're aiming at a multiplicity of diverse things which are conflictual those are your options and we know that if you're perception is fragmented and if your navigation is fragmented which is a chaotic State the consequence of that is anxiety and despair because that's actually what anxiety and despair Mark is that your your confident and secure when you're when you've reduced your plethora of potential past wage forward to One path you know that if you're in a vehicle it's like well are you going one place or ten if you're going 10 you can't go anywhere and you're confused you have to be going one place and then everything snaps together and then your nervous system is literally regulated anxiety is the response to chaos the a priority response can I ask Dennis a question in light of that so Dennis you said earlier that you need the necessity of God is is the necessity of belief in God is is what's going to restore us of what's going to keep civilization on the right track but is that uh is it enough to have a kind of psychological just a psychological sort of stability a belief that God might exist or that you should you should conduct yourself as if uh God is real God exists just as a kind of something that provides you with a kind of uh psychological unity and stability and order or do you think that it's do you think that that a culture needs more than that is is a kind of cultural cultural religion cultural Judaism cultural Christianity enough Well mine's not cultural I'm not as nice as cultural is uh yes it's a i wrestle with that and I have come down to the I've come to the conclusion that I offered earlier the number of people who believe in God and that God is meaningless is enormous for most moderns God is a Celestial Butler uh this God here is my list of what I'd like you to do for me have a great day I am I am uninterested I know this is almost heretical for many of my religious friends I have asked God in my whole life twice for something once that my mother not punished me for breaking the vase in the house and then once as an adult by the way in both instances they were answered it's a little Eerie for me who doesn't ask him for anything but but in all seriousness I am infinitely more interested in what God wants for me than what I want from God and that's that's the way I portray it to people and they're moved by that because they know God is not a Celestial Butler the number of people who prayed for their dying child and the child died everybody knows that that's the case so uh I I I am I hate to use the term I was going to say tired okay I'm tired of people who say they believe in God but it doesn't amount to anything why is God important change his Minds that and and you know the the founders of America which I think is the greatest country ever founded and and it may and it may fall over uh where we're at a crisis point they knew the importance they were not all doctrinaire Christians they were all by bicultural Christians clearly uh but they were all very god-centered uh when Benjamin Franklin is considered a deist the the the the the if theist means Aristotle's unmoved mover none of the founders were deists they believed in the God who acted in history Jefferson this is almost unknown to Americans Jefferson and Franklin designed a Great Seal of the United States you'll find this fascinating you know what it is the Jews leaving Egypt it was not tragically it was not adopted two of the least uh Orthodox Christians smallo were wanted the a Biblical depiction to depict America the the Hebrews left Egypt we left Europe that so they knew the importance of God and and a lot of Believers don't and so I just I'm sorry for talking so long time can I pick up on what Dennis is saying another aspect of the American Revolution you probably know that at the defeated George Yorktown the Hessian and British troops who ordered to play The Ballad the world turned upside down which was a 17th century ballad and came out of the English Revolution which came out of the Torah and their simple idea was it became various crazy things with the diggers and the levelers and so on God had created order humans have created Disorder so God to create order again turn the world the right way up and turned it upside down and you have in Acts 17 these men who've turned the world upside down have come here and so on so and the original idea of Revolution was actually biblical although in today it's almost totally taken over by the left reordering the world and putting it the right way up or again you should say repairing repairing the Earth yes preparing the world under the rule of God yeah so we we could say that you could ask the question not so much what do you have with God you could reverse it in the niche incense you could say what do you have without God and then what you definitely have is you have no centralizing access you have no highest you have no highest spirit in the highest place and so psychologically that means chaos and confusion and internal conflict and then you have no common spirit that unites you and so then you have conflict and so I would say that acting as if is the crucial issue and I was going over that this morning in a class I was doing on The Sermon on the Mount and Christ says in in The Sermon on the Mount The Ordering of his ethical injunction is something like do and then teach but it's in that order but it's not do only and it's not teach only it's due and then teach and so you could say you have this internal mimicry of the Father the Holy Spirit let's say the Revolutionary spirit in the proper sense and then you can communicate descriptions of That spirit and that's the religious Enterprise and we confuse that I would say in some sense with descriptions of external reality they're not the same thing the religious Enterprise is the description of the animating Spirit and the proper animating spirit and that's why even in the Exodus story God is presented as the spirit that calls the hero to lead his people out of slavery it's not a description of the world it isn't that the idea that there's wisdom in the world isn't there but that's not the superordinate idea and so I think you need both you have to have the acting as if that's the primary thing because otherwise you're a hypocrite the most famous philosopher of the as if is Emmanuel Kant of the 18th century I mean just the great kind of father of the Enlightenment and he's often thought to be somebody who who does away with god he's a kind of precursor to Nature in lots of ways there was a poet called heiner who said that Kant was much more devastating than Rose appear because whereas robespie are just decapitated a king can decapitated God but I think he had this idea that you you we can't we can't know that God God exists we can't have theoretical knowledge that God exists but we must so conduct ourselves in the ethical life as if God exists because as free beings that's the Primacy of pure practical reasons so so we know it's reality as free agents so you could say in a way that Kant is not actually claiming that I mean I think Heinen is completely wrong about this but that you know God is just a regulative as if as all but rather he is criticizing a notion that a sort of Aristotelian platonic notion that are you know we can know God by contemplating some abstract object and he's saying no we we have contact we have contact with numeral reality we have contact with the Divine as free agents so when we obey the the categorical imperative which he thinks is intrinsically linked to the idea of God that that's that's the kind of knowledge we saw that echoed with Moses I mean Moses walks by the burning bush but as we all noted he does turn to notice and so I would say we do have access to experience of God if if we pay enough attention and we pay enough attention to the things that in some sense transcend our current parochial conceptualization I mean I think he you know you're quite counting and I think your approach Jordan in the sense that you you you attend to the structures of subjectivity and the structures of the the that are uncovered by psychoanalysis and and psychology but you're also I think more and this is a development I think this is I've not really heard you talk like this until quite recently this notion of transcendence not kind of divine Transcendence but somehow that the the world beyond the world is it is as it's given morality as well pierces through those those that kind of your kind of psychological rapping I think that that's the development in your thought uh um just going back to Jonathan's point there is this what what Kant is doing and what maybe you're doing as well Jordan is separating out what you can say about God so you're just um cancer as you kind of we put put God behind what we can really know but we can still have faith in God we can conduct ourselves as if God exists but we can't know that God exists so I I want to return to Dennis's point I think it's such an important Point first of all with your track record on what you've asked God I think you would get a little bit more uh confident future requests well actually I think he I got the requests as God's way of laughing at me just just oh so you never asked me for anything just for that I will deliver right and then I also like you really you really want to burn one of your genie wishes all right I Was 80 years old all right hello okay but the point you made that I think is so important is you talked about that that you ask you basically your relationship with God is asking for responsibility like what what is your responsibility what does God want you to do right and that to me is the solution sorry that's a better prayer it's a better prayer but it's it's also the solution to when you're saying you're in a car and you need to know where you're going right we talk you and I talk all the time about how right now we have an elevation of what people's rights are over what the responsibilities are right if you're asking God for things it's it's infinite what you might want and and you know thank God for unanswered prayers there's a reason why that is a cliche that is entered not only the vernacular but country music right so part of this is is it's infinite if you're dictating your relationship with God based on things you might want but with responsibility if your focused to ask what it is and how you should serve that's what puts you in a car on a particular direction maybe that's also what helps you know that God exists in some real sense I mean there's a pair there's a paradox in the notion of whether we can know God exists and the paradise Paradox is in part you can't know God and so can you know that something exists that you can't understand and the answer is well then maybe that's why you only see God's back in some real sense right you you get hints and and and maybe you get hints if you open yourself up in the right way and one of the ways you open yourself up in the right way is not to ask for what you want in the God is a Celestial Butler manner but the the to ask how it is that you could transform yourself so that you could be a better agent of the Divine will or something and then what would you find when you do that when you Embrace responsibility what you find is meaning yeah well that that seems to that seems to me especially if the responsibility you believed is divine if it's if it's just purely human I don't know how much meaning it gives well what I mean is in your approach yeah that is my Approach so that is that is a route to meaning which is a route to the device the secularists would say well you without God you can still find meaning and service to others and I would say yes that's true but the reason you find meaning in the service to others is because that's one step on the ladder to the Divine yeah have you ever heard of data Brokers they're the middlemen collecting your browsing history online searches and location data to build a digital profile of you they make money by selling your profile to advertisers we use it to Target you with their ads the good news is you can keep that information out of their hands with expressvpn all of your devices have a unique IP address that apps and websites use to identify you expressvpn hides your IP address so data Brokers can't use it to track you expressvpn also encrypts 100 of your online traffic so data Brokers can't see what you're browsing searching or downloading the best part is you don't need to be a tech expert to use the expressvpn app just tap one button on your phone tablet or computer and you are protected secure your online data today by visiting expressvpn.com Jordan that's e-x-p-r-e-s-svpn.com Jordan and get three extra months free expressvp Jordan [Music] well the people who've constructed the gulags you know there was a lot of altruism there there was a lot of cooperation there was a lot of uh you know there was there was a horizon of action and and there was there was planning and so on by the way the the forgive me I just wanted the issue of uh the consequences of no guard is a very is a very powerful impetus in my life to believe as odd as it sounds I I always tell people I come to God through the back door not through the front of the front door is God has appeared to you in some way or whatever and I and I never knock that for anyone who has that experience I have not to me the most powerful rational argument is the consequences of the of the death of the Divine when the chaos and and indeed ultimately evil that ensues if I understand that without X nothing exists then X must exist I hate I'm not a physicist I I don't think in the algebraic terms but that's how I think the greatest argument for God is what happens without God yeah it seems to be in some sense the most irrefutable arguments the same way it's like well Nietzsche said God is dead and what's going to happen his prognostication was oh nihilism and psychological catastrophe and then mass murder on a scale unparalleled that's exactly right which is exactly right but Nietzsche would just call this wish fulfillment he might say well maybe reality just doesn't like us very much it doesn't but also Exodus would have an answer to that like the The View I think that this text is offering to us is there's nothing outside of God I mean there is no is there God is there not God I mean that at least the account of this text we can take it seriously is that I mean this text here is that it's all within God there's no there's no other side well that's part of the Divine unity and the Divine Unity argument in in a sense I think what's what's at least what the text is saying I think is that this text is trying to help us have a revelation of what God is that's what the you know the the Bible takes itself to be doing and in this case they statement that God is this Transcendent principle the source of all being the the the origin and you might say Sovereign principle of all reality I think is very fundamental here in relation to you know we can't simply say Moses goes and he does these things I mean the whole language of the text here and I think the whole argument of Exodus is that Moses has to bring himself into Conformity with that Transcendent principle which is his source and it's always described as you know he says right here in the beginning of the fourth the fourth chapter now they're not going to believe me and he says well okay let me tell you what to do and it says this this comes again and again and again and God said to Moses here's what I want you to do by God's word then people will assume that you're a legitimate agent of God and part and part of that to James's point about the gulags which is a very fair point is we tend to think of this orientation of meaning as being something that is an event like there's an epiphany and then it occurs but when you have meaning let's say you're in the car and you know where you're going there's that also driving in that car and going where you're going has a high likelihood of ossifying into rigidity right there's One Direction and you're on the path and what's so interesting to me with this with Mo there's so many mistakes right like God almost kills Moses later for some reason we don't even know and then Aaron messes everything up and it's it's a constant process and so far snake Rod snake right that's right and so faith is Faith is a process and there's a sort of rigidity that happens immediately of like I'm saved I'm found I have my meaning I'm going somewhere and it's like well be careful because every step of the way right the path that you're on a humble path right right it's like I'm on a path and it looks good but but but but who am I to be so certain so yeah well I think you could make the gulag Point even more particularly with the Germans because the Russians they just weren't that good at it I mean they killed a lot of people but compared to the Germans they didn't have that unbelievably disciplined efficiency and so in some sense what made the Nazi catastrophe so utterly horrifying is that what was the greatest in some real sense about western civilization was subverted most effectively to evil and that's a and no small part perhaps only in only because the Divine principle had fallen apart and then it was replaced I said something we're all experiencing it with everybody there's a gem thrown out and then another point and you but I I just wanna you said something to the effect that um how people behave or is their greatest argument for God or something that you recall just saying that I know you said something analogous but and I I it just triggered something that I I feel also very keenly the the greatest argument for atheism is never given by atheists it's given by bad religious people good religious people are the best Arguments for God's existence and bad religious people are the best argument for atheists those are people who comment on my biblical lectures who are atheists who've come to appreciate Genesis they almost all say the same thing they said I was so brutalized by bad religious people when I was a kid that it turned me against not only God but religion I have a prayer may all bad religious people either become good or atheists yeah yeah yeah so we don't know we don't know how much damage The Third Wish that's good after that there you go all right hey well look I'm batting two for two as we say in America to those of you I don't know we've gone through four whole verses so far that they may believe that the Lord of God that the Lord God of their fathers the god of Abraham Isaac and Jacob hath appeared unto thee and the Lord said furthermore unto Moses put now thine hand into thy bosom and he put his hand into his booze of like Napoleon and when he took it out behold his hand was as leprous as snow and he said put thine hand into thy bosom again and he put his hand into his bosom again and plucked it out and behold it was turned again as his other flesh and it shall come to pass God says if they will not believe thee neither hearken to the voice of the first sign the rod and the snakes that they will believe the voice of the louder sign and there's an emphasis here on the healing capacity of Divine Alignment it's something like that and so the hero is the person who can speak the words of magic that are Curative and well we certainly believe that in the psychotherapeutic sense so well to Oz's point yesterday believe the voice of the latter it's the voice of the latter even though it's visual right but it's it's just a I think it's also there to help you understand the first miracle it's just two versions of the same mirror Miracle no it's like moving from wholeness so one is a vertical a vertical to the watery chaos at the bottom snake at the bottom of Leviathan all that and the other one is the periphery to the center and so it's like move out disease move in find healing and so I think that that's what that's what it's it's showing it's like this relationship of the center to the to the periphery and the other one is a vertical to the to that which is at the bottom and if it shall come to pass if they will not believe also these two signs neither hearken unto thy voice that thou shalt take of the water of the river and pour it upon the dry land so there's more of his Mastery of water there and the water which thou takeest out of the river shall become blood upon the dry land and Moses said unto the Lord oh my Lord I am not eloquent neither heretofore nor since thou has spoken unto thy servant but I am slow of speech and of a slow tongue and the Lord said unto him who hath made man's mouth or who maketh the dumb or deaf or the seeing or the blind am I not the lord it's actually have I not the Lord now therefore go and I will be with thy mouth and teach thee what Thou shalt say and he said oh my Lord send I pray thee by the hand of him whom thou Wilt send and the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses and he said is not Aaron the levite thy brother I know that he can speak well and also behold he cometh forth to meet thee and when he seeth thee he will be glad in his heart and thou shalt speak unto him and put words in his mouth and I will be with thy mouth and with his mouth and will teach you what you shall do and he shall be thy spokesman unto the people and he shall be even he shall be to thee instead of a mouth and thou shalt be to him instead of God and so now we have this building of an intermediary structure Jonathan you've maybe got some things to say about that I think that this is the the beginning of this idea of and the importance of the intermediary structure but not just importance but also the manner in which God will fill the world is through something like that and so it's really radical what he's actually saying he's saying he's like I'm going to set up a structure in which you're going to be God to Aaron and I'm going to be God to you and so it's going to be like this this exactly this this hierarchy of sub gods and you'll see this so this is just the first example of it but then as the text continues there'll be all these different iterations of this intermediary structure whether it is the structure of authority that uh that that is uh that his wife's father is is suggesting and then whether it be the laws self the law is these mediations Jonathan why do you think that that first mediation or the first appointed sub God has to do with him being right because it's just as easy for God to say I will make thee speak clearly yeah why is the First Choice somebody who speaks who can speak from is it the proximity to God requires a sort of inarticulateness that the closeness to God means it can't be conveyed as clearly and thus the need for that's a really I never thought about it that's actually a very interesting idea because Moses is someone who by the nature of his experience can can can can be inspired by God but he can't translate it into language wait a minute if you speak articulately you're not close to God in light of that but isn't there something very striking here that um we're told that he you know he says I'm not eloquent and yet um you know at the end of the book of Deuteronomy uh we read that uh and there arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses whom God knew face to face now so this idea that Moses is the prophet par excellence and yet we're told he says I I'm not good with words I mean what means you can be good without being able to think verbally that's part of it clearly he grew well there's nothing face to face like the blind prophet there are many narrative tropes like that where you'll have someone who's deficient in the the prophet who doesn't see but actually sees spiritually so it's like this and the need for the Tran the need for the story but he sees God face he says I mean I'm just mentioned Deuteronomy he says sees him face to face but he's he's a mumbler he's a stumbler I really appreciated the point that you made yesterday Jonathan I I think that this idea that Moses is without logos and I'm not sure how it's translated in the the scepter again the Greek translation of the what the Century BC of of the Hebrew scriptures that Moses is so he's stumbling he's without speech but logos of course he's without reason and as it were he's the perfect vehicle for the Divine logos that's what you were trying to say I think right and he's being prepared just for not just for divine revelation but for the specific Revelation in the decalogue and it and it's important to understand the mediation the difficulty with mediation is that as you go down the mountain because as you come down then there's the problem that things can start going off key right away you know because that's the problem of mediation it's like on the one hand it offers the identity down into the particulars but also then it starts to get wonky on the mountain someone might make a golden calf while they're down at the bottom but that's exactly but it's Aaron who makes the golden character it's the one that God establishes as the second tier maybe there's a there's there's okay so what is the mediation is starting to the danger of the mediation elect is supposed to be subordinate to the process that has the divine revelation that's what it means and that's what it means and that's what Ian mcgilchrist has said about how the brain should function properly right is that the left hemisphere is the Arrogant intellect in all in in the fundamental sense of the word and it likes to think that what it knows is everything and properly it should be subordinate to the right which is inarticulate but which has it has the ability to look up fundamentally so Saint Gregory of Nissa who I've mentioned a few times in terms of his commentary on this he goes exactly towards McGill Chris I don't think is aware of him but so he says that Aaron is the helper and he presents him as the guardian angel he says Aaron is like the guardian angel and each person like in the cartoons they have an angel on their right shoulder and a devil on their left shoulder and both of those are something like they're Aaron the two possibilities of Aaron so it's like an influence which can pull you in one direction or the other and you have to be able to see the good helper and be careful of the date you know if you're orienting yourself properly in the world I would say in relationship to your own intelligence and your own verbal Acuity you want to keep that luciferian intellect subordinate to the ability to see The Burning Bush when it manifests itself and that's why attention should be support subordinate to to verbal Acuity because you want to be open to the revelation of the Divine because that's what keeps your your luciferian intellect in check and I would say that's partly why it's reasonable for someone like Dostoevsky and then soldiernitzen to say beauty will save the world because you have a revelation of the Divine in the apprehension of beauty and that's not that has to be translated into into the into the verbal before it's yeah so attention definition attention first definition Second well and I would say the Heavenly hierarchy most fundamentally is the hierarchy of attention that is what it is is there also not I mean what do you make of the fact I mean Moses is hardly portrayed here as you know the hero God says go he says oh who should I tell them sent me and then he says okay well listen he says well they won't believe me he says okay well here's two Miracles oh but I'm not very eloquent so I mean Moses is not Moses is not doubtful that this is God this is not a matter of I don't believe this guy I mean he he knows he's talking to God and God is telling him to do this and he's trying to get out of it right I mean clearly three or four times trying to say uh no not B so when trying to get it is and then God's plan is going to kill him so that what I'm trying to ask here is what does this mean for us like what is it you know it appears as though obedience is also necessary to the Revelation the right thing to the Revelation very common Motif mythologically though that the hero the hero flees when first confronted with the dragon or the giant or with his responsibility and I think that's a reflection of the fact that even if you're good like Moses and ready in some sense when push comes to shove you still might think well I'd rather be like Abraham maybe I'd rather be back in the tent eating people presented as a virtue here I don't know no no no I don't I don't think it is a virtue I think it's a human failing that's that's built mercifully into the net that's Clint Eastwood it's Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven right it's Kevin Costner it's opening The Bodyguard right this is a motif that's everywhere and part of it goes into I think Dennis you were working yesterday with a lot of people who are leaders who are the leaders who we want would not be people who want to be leaders right that's a trophy for sure that's right and so the fact that Moses is kind of hemming and hawing on the one hand seems like you know he's fetching right but on the other hand and there's an aspect that you want somebody who's not saying great I'm so glad God spoke to me I got this right get behind me God here we go and isn't the message here that that the two regular Joe's like me that God can use you right I mean your impediments you're you're not being articulate you're not being the right I mean the message here surely has got to be that God's work is brought about by Broken Vessels and also well also maybe even more than that in some sense is that the Brokenness might be a precondition for a kind of Revelation That Couldn't occur without that particular kind of Brokenness and so and that catches remember remember what he's facing I mean my family were friends of Wilberforce and I'm always amazed at his personal mission statement about slavery which in his day was an incredible idea but imagine this I mean slavish people and the greatest Empire maybe ever right and this is the no necessary pre-conception that slavery's in some essential sense wrong it's like the Egyptians necessarily think that what they're doing is wrong oh no absolutely now at least in the world finally right yeah exactly right right and justified by well justified by power so why wouldn't you justify that I would have ducked this I'm I'm I bet most of us would have well I think most of us do you know all the time and no wonder right it's no wonder and and that might be the the the sin of of false humility in some sense there's a lovely story of Coleridge if I may just interject where he used to go on holiday on the uh south coast of England and sometimes there were cargo from vessels that were Shipwrecked and uh the locals would look out for these these shipwrecks because of course the valuable things they would discover and apparently was observing this one morning on his morning constitutional and was recorded saying ah the providential Shipwreck maybe I'm a providential shipwreck I mean from the poet of the Ancient Mariner um but that's that's a deep place it's not such a bad way to conceptualize yourself and I think when you love someone you sort of conceptualize themselves that way too you know because this is especially true within families because you're sort of thrown into your family and so you're sort of with people who are on average like other people and they have the idiosyncrasies and their weaknesses but the fact that you love them means that you do regard them as providential shipwrecks you you could replace them with something perfect but then they wouldn't be the person that you love and to Stephen's term everyone's a broken vessel right and the break is the point at which the the the break the flaws or the point at which we were talking about this a little bit um the conversation yesterday about excising um versus integrating remember that when we were discussing that and part of the integration is that that the parts of us that are broken should always be there and broken that's the gift against which you hurl the other parts of yourself against to grow them larger it's not that you eliminate it right it's not that you repress us and so all those broken aspects of it and the broken vessel is it's like it's it's the it's the god-given or evolutionarily selected depending on which way you come from it give that gives you the thing against which to hone yourself I'm just mesmerized I'm sorry I I stopped the providential Shipwreck and I I was thinking when I call my wife tonight honey you are my providential shipwreck yeah yeah let us know how it goes I will let you know how it goes and as well as I know her I'm not sure how she will react I'm sensing a new line of Douglas of Douglas Hallmark cards well companies may have a shipwrecking your future and thou shalt take this rod in thine hand wherewith Thou shalt do signs and Moses went and returned to Jethro his father-in-law said unto him let me go I pray thee and to return unto my brethren which are in Egypt and see whether they be yet they be alive and Jethro said to Moses go in peace and the Lord said unto Moses in Midian go return into Egypt for all the men are dead which sought thy life and Moses took his wife and his sons and set them upon an ass and he returned to the land of Egypt and Moses took the rod of God in his hand and the Lord said unto Moses when thou goest to return into Egypt see that thou do all those wonders before pharaoh which I've put in thine hand but I will harden his heart that he shall not let the people go and thou shalt say unto Pharaoh thus saith the Lord Israel is my son even my firstborn and I say unto thee let my son go that he may serve me and if thou refuse to let him go behold I will slay thy son even thy firstborn and it came to pass by the way in the end that the Lord met him and sought to kill him then zebra took a sharp Stone and cut off the foreskin of her son and cast it at his feet and said surely a bloody husband art thou to me so he let him go and then she said a bloody husband Thou Art because of the circumcision and the Lord said to Aaron go into the Wilderness to meet Moses and he went and met him in the Mount of God and kissed him and Moses told Aaron all the words of the Lord who had sent him and all the signs which he had commanded him I got to stop there for a second I do not understand what happens in the section with zipperah so please do some insights so so I want you to I want you let's let me do it a narratively for you first and then maybe you can get a sense of what is going on here so this What's Happening Here is actually the same thing that happened with the rod and the snake and it's the same thing that happened with the the disease hand and the and the let's say a healed hand in the heart Okay so and it's the same thing as removing the sandals that move just removes his sandals as he goes into the burning bush and it's ultimately the same thing as escaping Egypt and going up the mountain is about removing the foreign and finding the heart and so the the circumcision is the Garment of skin that is removed in order to remove in order to reveal the central Rod okay but it's also the mark of the Foreigner at least for the for Israel it is that that the way that I recognize someone's not one of us is because he's got that Garment of skin so you remove the Garment of skin but that removal of the Garment skin is all about this idea so that exposes the rod it's the the snake that that becomes the rod it's all of these things to Return to Eden to Return to Eden because you you you remove the garments of skin and you enter into so the same he removes the center and the exacerbation of nakedness yeah the circumcision to the pre-lapse area and the pre-fall state of isn't it also an inoculation like the blood to for God to pass over on Passover on the door when she touches him with the blood I don't know I've never thought about that particular but if you think about it I mean she when she says she casted at his feet and in other words it's the same it's the sandals he removed his sandals to get into so she's it's a relationship between this garments of skin and the feet it's the bottoms also their sexuality related as well isn't feet code for different aren't there different interpretations of what that means well not in this case but uh if um though the word is is generally Regal which doesn't mean much here but the um the holidays for example when the Jews would go to Jerusalem by foot are called feet the three festivals are the three feet I don't know if that helps you in any way it's in the story of Ruth and Boaz in the sort of in the story of Ruth in Boaz Ruth uncovers boaz's feet so there's a sexual economy that is a sexual connotation okay so in part of this is she uncovers he it's it's related to the yeah in a certain regard that allows God to pass over and not kill him I don't think it's that the God was going to kill and my understanding that God is going to kill his son that is by the so okay so to be completely unhelpful I just I'll just tell you that when I wrote my commentary I I perused everything I could find we we don't know exactly and we don't know that in particular was it Moses or the son maybe ambiguity is also that's right that's exactly right the fact is though that she saved them that that's important okay because I don't know by the way she's also she's a foreign woman another woman it has to do with spoiling the Egyptians in a certain manner as well because it's the here's now the foreign woman who is properly removing that which is let's say improperly foreign but but but let's say keeping that which is properly foreign because she is a foreign woman and Moses only has at least that we know only has foreign wives right and so there's it's not it's not we have to be careful because we always we don't want to say like you have to just remove the strange remove the stranger no it's a more subtle relationship it's that you have to remove the strange that's not part of the system so think of it basketball team all the strange that is so think of a basketball team right if you have bad players is you have to get rid of them if they don't fit you don't want people doing something else while you're practicing basketball if you've got someone practicing the accordions I know that's strange remove it from the basketball practice please but you have to keep your eyes open for that which is new and potential and not part of your system so that you can integrate the proper strange or something rather simple and basic does often I I read in the rabbis and I was what was the sign of the Covenant for Abraham it was the sign of the Covenant it was circumcision circumcision but the question is why is that a sign of in fact the Hebrew you all know the word bris or many of you first it's it's called the circumcision but bris means Covenant yeah it's Britney law it is the the Covenant of circumcision doesn't the point here that a lot of people make is that here's the leader and his son is not circumcised that's right it is yes that's part of it definitely what I was saying we don't know is we don't know why God got so angry and we don't know at whom yeah it looks like there's a piece of the story and by the way in when whenever I've come to that and it's not often where there's a piece clearly missing through us I always um uh console myself because I want to understand everything but uh not everything in life but everything in the Torah but with this it clearly was clear to them the uh the Torah has an incredible task and so does all biblical literature but the Torah is the oldest it had to be it had to be important and meaningful to people in the late Bronze Age and to us and that it succeeds is not argument 56 for me that it's a Divine text but they undoubtedly understood this story better than we do but Dennis would you also say that it's part of scripture and divine revelation that it's both accessible easy for an ordinary person to understand that's good and yet hard enough that's right the philosophers and as there and as the Regular Joe I just just want to point out you know the words in the book here that that you know it's only verse 14 in which the anger of the Lord is kindled against Moses it's only like now it's only verse 24 that the Lord met him and sought to kill him and relative to Moses is let's say uh uh the the instability in his will you know I don't really have to do it I think this this ritual marking is very important I mean if if the book in a way is about the conforming or the revelation of this Sovereign principle of all reality and the conforming of of us or the Israelites in relation to that despite a reality despite our inadequacies I mean you know it can't be just an existential thing well I kind of feel like today I feel like I don't and in a way the the ritual marking is a way of saying you know here I am well it's a sacrifice it's a sacrifice and a marker that's permanent so and it conveys the important point that leaders are not exempt special privileges 0.2 that you're not exempt from the Divine commandment despite your inadequacies which because that can be an excuse right it's like Well it can't be me look at the problems with me it's like yeah you're full of problems man it's amazing you could even ambulate but that doesn't that doesn't put you outside the divine order I think you'll find it of interest on the human level I I don't cry often I I cried at both my son's circumcisions and I I'm not big into prayer this is my own problem I fully acknowledge I'm much more into study but I I I was overwhelmed by being part of this tradition from Abraham to the present that Jews did this in concentration camps in in in pogroms and I'm doing it as well in California in the 21st or 20 well 20th 20th century uh I I I I just want you to know how much it means to many Jews it's and and I fully acknowledge it transcends the rational that that well we're trying to understand why part of something so much bigger than me I'm I'm continuing this people that has been you know the the bush that is not consumed but burned all the time it's just I I thought you'd find that of interest because how powerful it can be so the narrative picks up by the way for one forgive me I I got a call from a guy in San Francisco this is the the joy of doing a radio show who was the head of no Circ um which needless to say would be in San Francisco an anti not only anti-circumcision but was working to have his foreskin restored and I I I will never forget I wish I was a little it's very hard to stun me after all these years of radio and I said I'm sorry did I get that right you are working to restore your foreskin and then I just I don't normally insult callers I just said you must be very bored and that was the end of it I love that it's called No Circ and he called into like your show's like Cirque du Soleil it's like a celebration you need some branding some branding help all right so back to the main narrative by all appearances and the Lord said to Aaron go into the Wilderness to meet Moses and he went and meant it met him in the Mount of God okay so that's in the proper place and kissed him and Moses told Aaron all the words of the Lord who had sent him and all the signs which he had commanded him and Moses and Aaron went and gathered together all the Elders of the children of Israel and so that's the next move down that hierarchy and Aaron spakehold Awards Words which the Lord had spoken unto Moses and did the signs in the sight of the people and the people believed and when they heard that the Lord had visited the children of Israel and that he had looked upon the reflection then they bowed their heads and worshiped so now the message is being translated and the reaction this is the reaction because we talk again we talked about this before as well is that when we say act as if God exists I always insist that acting as if God exists is not first a moral question is a question of where your attention is and what you celebrate worship is the first reaction of the realization of God and it's not moral it's it's it's premormal right it is it is they're just recognizing that this is the source of all things that that I am in contact with it and that oh sense of awe you know throws me to the ground in prostration yeah what's interesting or leaps you it leaps you to your feet in enthusiasm that's what people do when someone scores a goal and it's because there's that archetypal element of hitting the targets like if you're up and worshiping before that's why people go there is to have that experience they don't know they're they're participating in the Divine in that game but they wouldn't be going there and paying that money and and watching this if that if it wasn't a form of worship because it's a form of worship what's necessary too for I'm going to use the term conversion Loosely but if you're Gathering more people down the hierarchy like you're saying is you need to embody in word indeed right so this is part of what happened because on the one hand you can look at it you know what more proof do you do you need right but we're reading this in the Bible in real time these are fairly insane propositions that are being presented so it's important that Dangerous Ones too right so you have leader you have Aaron and you have Moses coming down and they're they're proving this aspect of faith in word of deed right so that's a that's a call to a certain purity of leadership if you want to be a you know a role model or a leader if you want to bring the people out of tyranny instead of establishing one right so part of you has to be in touch with the Divine and that would be the open attention part I would say in some sense and then part of you has to be able to speak magic words and that combination if it's genuine that that's enough to lead people out of tyranny so and then that is something to pray for all the time with political leadership and you can see sometimes we have one or the other you know you have a man who's a good man clearly but who just can't communicate it we've met with political leaders like that in Washington the impeccable moral character but not convincing that's right and the number one thing when we pull the American public about what their biggest issues are with political leadership it's always hypocrisy and Corruption right right so there are errands without Moses right right and that's why they can produce the golden calf so solidity of deed and word yeah and it's so interesting here that that's so complicated to manage together that they have to be parsed into two people for that to be managed in the text who and afterward Moses and Aaron went in and told pharaoh thus saith the Lord God of Israel let my people go you said there was trickery in this that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness and Pharaoh said who is the Lord that I should obey his voice to let Israel go and that's exactly what you expect from a tyrant it's like well I'm God here it's like what are you talking about these are my slaves I own them why should I be letting them go who's telling me this I know not the Lord neither will I let Israel go and they said the god of the Hebrews hath met with us let us go we pray thee three days journey into the desert as that's out beyond the confines of civilization and sacrifice unto the Lord Our God lest he fall upon us with pestilence or with the sword and the king of Egypt said unto them wherefore do you Moses and Aaron let the people from their Works get you unto your burdens and Pharaoh said behold the people of the land now are many and you make them rest from their burdens and Pharaoh commanded the same day the task masters of the people and their officers saying you shall no more give the people straw to make brick as heretofore let them go and gather straw for themselves and the amount of the bricks which they did make heretofore you shall lay upon them you shall not dismant diminish art thereof for they be idle therefore they cry saying let us go in sacrifice to our god so you see here it's quite interesting because the Tyrant the Pharaoh is the opposite of Moses in some sense he's received a divine revelation because Moses who's the agent of God has come to him and said what you're doing is wrong give us a bit of a break and the Pharaoh instead of just saying no says no not just no it's like you want a little Freedom here's a little more slavery and so here we'll just make it a little bit harder and that's what you get for asking for well even a modicum even a modicum of freedom and so we know already that the Pharaoh is the kind of tyrant who will double down even in the presence of legitimate Authority yeah that's the definition of tyranny but you can see it fractively even at all levels within yourself I think of an alcoholic who suddenly decides I'm going to stop drinking and then watch him a few days later like binge out of his mind right it's like there's a there's a sense in between any time you try to free yourself from anything the the the the thing you're trying to free yourself from doesn't want to let you know not only doesn't want to let you go but if you start to manifest like a desire to get away it'll it'll just bite down on you man just um note the feast and the sacrifice um this is probably a question for Dennis I mean um let my people go that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness and then the emphasis that let us go to sacrifice I mean these again these are primordial Concepts the notion of the feast yeah and the combination of the two right because it's it's party and and and privation at the same time it's that combination exactly I once had a conversation with an anthropologist who um works on on feasts because we're the only animals who have meals and he was working on these ancient sites I think about sixty thousand uh BC where there was these circular remains where you can see that our ancestors started to um to eat together because our our kin and the rest of the animal kingdom chimps and whatever they do not look at each other when they eat um they certainly don't show their teeth to each other and it's it's very hierarchical so the the alpha gives the food to the others and and to the females whatever so this idea of the feast the the meal eating together Community well it's so interesting watching little kids you know when my daughter was like under two I would sometimes just as a joke take her dessert and often she would shame because I'd take her dessert and then I'd give it back and she'd say here Dad you could have it don't think oh God kid she stopped doing that at about three so and that was interesting too because there was a developmental transformation that's typical but one of the things that's absolutely utterly striking about children it's it's miraculous in some sense is that they're really good at sharing food and it's so deeply ingrained into us that that and part of the reason I thought about this anthropologically and biologically is like we we weren't really big enough predators to be that successful against mammoths on our own but 20 of us we could take down a mammoth pretty well we probably killed all of the mammoths in North America and in in in in Northern in the northern what is now the Soviet Union it's pretty good for you know naked apes and but the problem with a mammoth is was what are you gonna eat the whole thing you can't really store it and so what we learned to do in some real sense was store our excess hunting store in the bodies of other people and that was the best way to do it it's like well if even if you're a great hunter when you go out with your crew you might not get an animal someone else might no matter how good you are you're not 100 successful but if there's 20 of you one of you is going to be successful just about every time and so if you share the food what you're really doing in the most fundamental sense is you're you're placing a moral obligation on someone else to share their future food with you and it's it's it's preservation of food in the most fundamental way and so it's so paradoxical too because what it means is that we learned that if you share food which is a sacrifice right and that's another thing to think about in terms of the relationship between feast and sacrifice whatever you're eating I don't get to eat that's the sacrifice it's like well yeah but it's a sacrifice it so interesting it is the sacrifice that brings plenty to everyone to give up your food to others is the sacrifice that brings plenty to everyone so can we talk about there's an aspect of this ask to me that seems not in good faith and I have a question if this is just my reaction or something that's trickery of food so part of this is is first of all Pharaoh said sure no problem go for three days and come back it doesn't seem like that would have been a sufficient answer to not incur the wrath of God and the second thing is if they're going to go off out of the reach and their slaves what's to say that they would come back like it's a very odd request I think it's to show that even this minimal request would not be okay with Pharaoh but the minimum request is not made in good faith right okay well because theoretically because God says I'm going to take you out and put you into the promises the three days and came back then it would be okay then they could stay as slaves that's why it's not a fully in good faith I think well I think it's interesting point so you think that it might have been the only request that they were making well I think partly what's going on here is that Pharaoh is himself being tested about whether he will true himself to the principle of our reality to God and the answer of course turns out to be no he won't and a lot of what's going on in these chapters is the demonstration of the sovereignty of the principle against the resistance of pharaoh and so I mean the story could have gone differently I mean that is to say Pharaoh could have said hey you know what I totally get this whole thing that you're revealing to me I get it uh I've been out of line you know what go ahead that would have been a different story of course I'm not a farewell I'm saying I'm saying the story is such that what we can't assume it's bad faith because what we know is what Pharaoh actually does and he's judging the base of what he actually does but his heart is hardened and we also knows it's super interesting because the Pharaoh is trying from the beginning to reduce Israel to potential to reduce them to slaves that serve Israel Egypt but don't have their own identity and now like Moses saying the god of Israel has shown himself to us like that's a pretty threatening for Pharaoh it means like it means that the the thing that holds you together the thing that makes you exist as a people like the god of your ancestors is back and it's like I know what happens that's right I don't want I don't want any of that I don't want I did like I don't even want I don't want you to celebrate that God because you celebrate that God that means that you are going to bind as a people you're going to have an identity I don't want that I want you to be a bunch of riffraff slaves that do whatever but it's not about what I'm saying is that that that it's it's not bad faith to want to do that and I mean Pharaoh's being judged for his refusing to allow that to happen so I think really what's going on I mean it's like Jordan says do not lie right not because I don't know God will punish you in some kind of external you know like Butler or you know someone out there is coming in to just you know externally make make your life difficult because why shouldn't you be alive no but because you're lying is wrong because it pits you against the very nature of what's Real and True and so good luck with that and I think that's what's going on with Pharaoh you don't think that because the thing is so the thing is that if you understand that this is also this whole thing of Israel and Egypt is a little it's a big repetition of Abraham going to Egypt and lying to the Pharaoh about his wife and now you've got and then try so that you can get out of trouble now you've got the same pattern here so it's hard not to see that there's something trick of trickery afoot I also love how we've attributed do not lie to Jordan that's great that's my highlight it's just students expectations in here somewhere it's a terrible thing to have to bring back it's like remember this rule but but the but it but God's also made clear that he's going to lead them out of slavery not that he's going to lead them out for a three-day party it's not like it's uh none of that Pharaoh knows and and and I don't think we can understand the text simply in the language of trickery because what's going on in Pharaoh's resistance is this a Titanic force of reality that that that we will see how it is resolved yeah well and he's not he's obviously not guilty about the whole the slave thing it's like no no forget it and like just because you asked we're going to wax you judged on his own actions too right this isn't uh he's not a pawn I mean he he's he's an agent in this story but he's in Egypt he's God right right but he thinks he's God no well in Egypt he is God that's right and he's the freest man in Egypt so that I'm going to bring you to all the way because you're Christians I'm going to bring you all the way to to the New Testament he's just that trickery in the land of of uh of the stranger can re-establish order and the final example that we believe in in Christianity is that when Christ dies and goes into death death thinks that it has won but it's all a trick it's a trick on death and that's how it's presented in the gospel of Nicodemus I thought it's presented in the tradition of the harrowing of Hell which is that Here Comes This Here Comes The Son of God we succeeded and then wait what's going on this is not what we thought and then it flips so I think that the pattern of trickery in the land of the stranger something we call it something like the double flip the double inversion which is like in the land where everything is upside down and everything is wrong there's a manner in which some some kind of trickery is a foot well there's there's trickery and there's deception right because I think what's with the difference the difference is that in your deception what I'm trying to argue here is simply this is that is that Pharaoh's being judged on his own terms he's there's not a setup as if well that wasn't very fair to Pharaoh no I mean no no I think he's being judged in his own terms just as the centurings are just as the thief on the cross is justice so what I'm saying is that there can be a plan you're not aware of a foot but which the game isn't fair if you're being judged for actions you didn't take and so yeah okay I didn't know the whole picture but I still did what was right or wrong but there is something at the odds of the deal here isn't it because eventually pharah says oh you can go but without the cattle and and no not a hoof must be left behind so the demands get stronger no no no no please finish now let's raise another point that let my people go it's the most famous words in the whole book and the Cry of many Liberation movements but might you Jewish friends say to me the extraordinary thing is the word Freedom doesn't come in Exodus at all well the word freedom is it's interesting the modern Hebrew word for freedom is and I don't believe it's in the Torah the the word in Leviticus which is on the Liberty Bell and you shall Proclaim Liberty throughout the generation the land through all its inhabitants is another word which is rarely used I think it's the Roar and uh and so you're right interestingly it's it's an app the Torah is not a fan of abstract Concepts it doesn't have a word for equality Moses he doesn't have a word for equality yeah it doesn't say just let my people go it says Let My People Go that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness they believe so to be a slave of God like they're leaving Egypt to become enter into this Covenant and enter into the law of God right it's not a like abstract like random freedom I just want to know I'm very curious you said I didn't obviously want to interrupt so you said that children normally share food Jordan foreign so my uh my non-scientific experience has been that when I've been to birthday parties of little kids you see kids with eight cupcakes barely able to hold them share one with with little uh Devin here no yeah well there's there's it's context dependent because you do see flips of that with children as well but there are certain situations in which they'll absolutely they'll absolutely feed other people and they'll share food with their parents and so okay children flip frames of of conception quite quickly and they can certainly snap into a very selfish mode there's also a cupcake exemption and maybe there's birthday party cupcakes I've only seen it with cupcakes try with celery and see what happens just a very quick injection I mean over this notion of Freedom um I mean even with an abstract philosophical Instrumentarium that you find in say Greek um if you look at the origins of that abstract vocabulary it often has a social background so that the the origins of so the concept of of freedom in uh in in ancient Greek philosophy has really to do with whether you're a slave or free um so the you know the the so you still have social obligations if you're free you're a citizen then rather than a slave well yes but you're you're the the concept of the abstract concept of Freedom has has etymological roots in straightforward social status actually which which you still uh so in in I mean in German today a word for a baron a fry here is literally a free Lord right so and that's but that's that's a strictly social uh status term and so the the actually the link between as it were the the the the sort of almost banal social structure and then the abstract philosophical terminology um is quite an interesting story itself so you think that at least to begin with there's no real there's no real notion of Freedom this is a big question I mean so there are lots of um Scholars who would debate you know to what extent does the concept of the person to what extent does the concept of the will to what extent is is is freedom you know where does that emerge and and some in fact would say that you know in the west the whole concept of the the free person actually develops very late you at least see here that it's sort of like your Dennis your conception of how you came to God is through the back doors you come to Freedom through the back door here we don't know what freedom is here although we do know it's Associated perhaps with having a feast to God in the wilderness but we know it's not slavery right right it's good the negative is flesh you forced me to say what I just said earlier about the lack of conception uh uh in the Torah of these words equality and and freedom and it this will blow my Christian friends Minds I don't think love in the as a noun appears in the Torah love as a verb definitely the Torah cares how you be it it's really not an abstract instrument this is how you behave doing it and I have totally as a Jew and as a human internalize that my my whole thesis on happiness which is a huge part of of my thinking and my writing is you should act happy even if you do not feel it because you owe it to others to have a happy disposition so I I have taken I realize subconsciously so are you actually happy to be here I am acting happy today that's exactly right yeah but I I really imbibe this in my life I am such a behavior tourist and I know I got it from the Torah and Judaism so I'm sorry but my my all-time favorite anecdote fourth grade in Yeshiva I remember very little from fourth grade the rabbi announces okay boys because it was only incumbent upon the boys this is an Orthodox Jewish school he goes it's time to davenment meaning it is time for the afternoon prayer and being who I always was very respectfully but with khutzpah I walked over and I go uh Rabbi fostag I'm not in the mood to David mincha the guy was from Eastern Europe he spoke English but he had clearly never it was obvious to me heard mood and pray in the same sense and the guy thinks he looks up he Strokes his beard and he goes Prager that's my Hebrew name is not in the mood so what the man changed my life I mean it's utterly sincerely I have said to myself when I have not been in the mood to do the right thing all of my life so what right right why is it about and that is so torah-like it's it's you don't feel it big deal it's why the Torah is not conceptual act it have a great day okay good and gentlemen real quick so I have to go to see about a dog on the other coast so I'm gonna cut out early yeah we'll see you all tomorrow and thank you we're sorry to hear about that thank you I'll be back for tomorrow's session okay okay thanks thank you thanks great and thank you for the help and the Pharaoh doubles down again the king of Egypt said unto them where for you wherefore do ye Moses and Aaron let the people from their Works get you unto your burdens and Pharaoh said behold the people of the land now are many and you make them rest from their burdens and Pharaoh commanded the same day the task masters of the people and their officers are saying you shall no more give the people straw to make brick is heretofore let them go and grather straw for themselves and the tale of the bricks which they did make heretofore you shall lay upon them you shall not diminish auth thereof for they be idle it therefore they cry saying let us go and sacrifice to our God let there be more work laid upon the man that they may labor therein and let them not regard vain words and the task masters of the people went out and their officers and they spake to the people saying thus saith pharaoh I will not give you straw Yee get you straw where you can find it yet not ought of your work shall be diminished so the people were scattered abroad throughout all the land of Egypt together stubble instead of straw so now Moses has actually made it worse for them so that's annoying and so and people are going to be irritated about God for that and the task Masters hasted them saying fulfill your Works your daily tasks as when there was straw and the officers of the children of Israel which Pharaoh's task Masters had set over them were beaten and demanded wherefore have you not fulfilled your task in making brick both yesterday and today as heretofore then the officers of the children of Israel came and Cried unto Pharaoh saying wherefore dealers thou thus with thy servants there is no straw given unto thy servants and they say to us make brick and behold thy servants are beaten but the fault is in thine own people but Pharaoh said you're idle you're idle therefore you say let us go and do sacrifice to the Lord go there for now and work for there shall be no straw given to you yet you shall deliver the tale of bricks and the officers of the children of Israel did see that they were in evil case after it was said ye shall not Minish ought from your bricks of your daily task and they met Moses and Aaron who stood in the way as they came forth from pharaoh and they said unto him them the Lord look upon you and judge because you have made our savior to be aboard in the eyes of pharaoh and in the eyes of the servants to put a sword in their hand to slay us and Moses returned unto the Lord and said Lord wherefore hast thou so evil entreated this people why is it that thou has sent me for since I came to pharaoh to speak in thy name he hath done evil to this people neither hast thou delivered thy people at all well and so you see this Motif in the story of Abraham as soon as Abraham is called out of his tent by God it's like things get way worse for Abraham they do and I wonder to what degree that's that's a that's a desert Motif right there is that here here it's actually an an exacerbation of order this is what we're seeing because in the the biblical thinking there's a relationship between rest Sabbath and worship and so what the fair was saying because they're saying we're going to go worship Our God and start because no you're going to work no Sabbath for you it's all order all the way down all the time civilization like the the negative aspect of civilization you will work non-stop you will not rest instrumental though instrumental orders yourself well they're being reduced to agents of instrumentality and so you can really see the danger of like absolute systematization absolute order where there's no place for the private there's no place to hide from the the you know the Big Brothers there's no Feast there's no there's no address there's no hiding it's order all the way down this is the like the the 1984 idea that like there's no place for anything else but the system but that's a kind of totalitarian order here right which is precisely what's overturned by a greater order well it's it's that the the order that God gives is is a mitigated order which which is balances out Heaven and Earth as he did in creation itself but now it's like it's just heaven like it's just light all the way down work civilization you know no no no I was thinking it was a desert prodroma so to speak because when the Egyptians first try to flee from tyranny or when the Israelites first try to flee from tyranny instead of things getting better they get worse now I know it's a consequence of the exacerbation of order but for the for the for the Israelites it's like well we tried to resist tyranny and now now things are worse yeah more tyranny yeah this is by the way a recurring theme apparently with tyrants when uh when the the check Jew assassinated uh was it hydrish was it hydration 42 and uh the Nazi official Hydra and and so Hitler ordered all the the men of of that Village at linichay right in check what was that Czechoslovakia to be murdered tyrants doubled down they doubled they doubled down that's right if I can get cruel enough you'll finally give it well they've already can this is partly why the pharaoh's heart is hardened if I've already convinced myself that I'm right and the farther I've gone in convincing myself that I'm right when I'm not the more price I have to pay if I admit that I'm wrong and so at some point it gets to the point where it's it's much easier to Double Down than to think oh my God I'm I'm Hitler like who wants to think that who wants to realize that and by some point the realization is so awful that there's no way that you can manage it so I think you made the point I think we this was touched on earlier or or I dreamed about you but but something uh that taking it completely away from tyrants and evil just in normal life it's very common for people caught in something to double down yeah yeah exactly wasn't that said yeah was that said yesterday so this is the your uh yeah the more tyrannical you are almost by definition the more that's like just even in a normal day uh the guys caught having an affair and you know and instead of saying I'm so sorry this is awful yeah he doubled down with his lies and and and then and keeps attacking her well oh you don't trust me what kind of wife are you yeah right right well you see this with politicians all the time too they get caught with their hand in the cookie jar and then they say well no no I didn't do that I couldn't do that I'm not that person and then often they get into what they say is I'll give you a cookie yeah that's that's the worst they often get in more trouble for the doubling down than they than they would have if they would have just said well yeah you know I screwed up I'm an idiot right we had a politician in Canada who was premier of Alberta for a long time Ralph Klein and Ralph had a drinking problem and he had a lot of flaws but people really liked him because he was one of these shipwreck vessels you know it's like Ralph would just say oh yeah I'm such an idiot I'm trying to get better like he got his bachelor's degree when he was premier of Alberta because he hadn't had one and he went to University while he was Premier to get his bachelor's degree by correspondence you know and so he was a guy who could say yeah you know I'm stupid and I'm tyrannical sorry sorry everyone uh you caught me I'm dumb and then he was he was Premier for a very long time and people liked him a lot they kind of felt he was you know he was one of us we've got flaws too man so that's interesting he didn't double down so then the Lord said unto Moses oh we're in we're in Exodus 6 now we're in Exodus six now then the Lord said unto Moses now shall thou see what I will do to pharaoh this is the catastrophe of doubling down right it's like and it's weird that God hardens Pharaoh's heart you think well what's God up to well God is in some sense responsible for everything so you can't just hand wave that away but the Tyrant doubles down and that's a consequence and and there's and there's going to be consequences I saw this in my clinical practice all the time when people double down is that they made things worse very very rapidly so now thou thou see what I will do to pharaoh to the Tyrant for with a strong hand shall he let them go and with a strong hand shall he drive them out of his land and God spake unto Moses and said unto him and that's a justification to Moses Moses says look I got in a lot of trouble you know volunteer orders here and it's a lot worse for the Israelites no wonder they're complaining and God says you wait the Pharaoh is not just going to let you go he's going to insist that you go you're going to have a victory that's even greater than the victory that you would have had and God spake unto Moses who said unto him I am the Lord and I appeared unto Abraham and Isaac and Jacob by the name of God Almighty but by not by name Jehovah I was not was I not known to them and I've also established my Covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan the land of their pilgrimage when they were strangers and I have also heard the groaning of the children of Israel whom the Egyptians keep in bondage and I've remembered my Covenant wherefore say unto the children of Israel I am the Lord and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians and I will rid you of their bondage and I will redeem you with a stretched out arm and with great judgments and I will take you to me for a people and I will be to you a God and you shall know that I am the Lord your God which bringeth you out from under the burden of the Egyptians and I will bring you into the land unto the land concerning the which I did swear to give it to Abraham Isaac and to Jacob and I will give it to you for a Heritage I am the Lord and Moses spake so unto the children of Israel but they hearken not unto Moses for anguish of spirit and for cruel bondage and the Lord spake unto Moses saying go in speak unto Pharaoh king of Egypt that he let the children of Israel go out of his land and Moses spake before the Lord saying behold the children of Israel have not hearkened unto me behold the children of Israel have not hearkened unto me how then shall Pharaoh hear me whom of uncircumcised lips it's a reference to his inability to speak there and the Lord spake unto Moses and said and unto Aaron and gave them a charge unto the children of Israel and unto Pharaoh king of Egypt to bring the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt and it came to pass on the day when the Lord spake unto Moses in the land of Egypt that the Lord spake unto Moses saying I am the Lord speak thou unto Pharaoh king of Egypt all that I say unto thee and Moses said once again behold I am of uncircumcised lips how shall feral hearken unto me so Moses is in the hell of a conundrum here because he's convinced the Israelites in some sense that he's a legitimate agent of God and then he he bearded the dragon is his den and faced the Pharaoh and the Israelites were in trouble before but now they're really in trouble so now they won't even listen to him and hypothetically they believe him and God still says yeah well go talk to the Pharaoh again it's no wonder Moses is rejecting it's like really really this this didn't seem to have worked so far and now back into The Fray so Exodus 7. well come eat yes please go right ahead I remember hearing uh whatever you call it it's a Jew a sermon we would call it but they're pointing out that incredible Passage in Hebrew and I don't speak Hebrew Dennis does it starts I am the Lord and then there are 50 words that deal with the past Abraham Isaac and Jacob and then I am the Lord and 50 words dealing with the future and then I am the Lord that's fascinating 50 Hebrew words and and The Great I Am the Lord the self-affirmation yeah it's divided temporally that way and he says you know I I I by my name Jehovah Yahweh I was not known right right and a lot of Christians on there why misunderstand that because Yahweh comes 160 odd times in Genesis it's written by Moses right at least according to the tradition it was written by Moses I know but um clearly that it might have been a revelation of the time of Moses that was put back into knowing like oh this was like we have now the highest revelation of something which has of someone or a God that has been revealing himself to us until now and now we have now we know what we know we know that no there's another possibility and that is the name was known but the meaning was not yeah and nowadays what you've got the meeting was just given at the burning bush there was no meaning to to God's name before but now you'll see it okay so there's new attributes of wealth yes you're going to know in action actually well well that makes sense because the Bible is revelatory and what that means is that what's being revealed is the nature of the spirit of God and so with each other absolutely no more yeah yeah definitely well and that just continues with each I mean in it's it's so true from a narrative sense that the Bible is a sequence of Revelations of character it's like well who's god well first of all he makes order out of chaos and second it's the order that's good and then he he's the spirit you walk with when you're unself-conscious in the garden and then he's that which prepares Noah to batten down the hatches and now he calls you to Adventure and each of those is oh that's what God is it's then those things are really qualitatively different and and it's it's even a miracle that you can in some sense see them as a Unity right and say oh all those different things those are the same thing well what is that well I guess that's what it is that's where we get it here all those things that have already been revealed are now shown to be a manifestation of the Cardinal principle of being itself and that's I mean you see it it could be before that God is constantly revealing himself with all these names like all these different names different aspects of God and then we get to this revelation of God as being itself or the ground of being itself and I think that that I think it's it's that's into that in the text also because you see you know before that it's like Abraham called upon god with this name and then he called upon god with this name and so they have all these different names for something which is revealed like I'm not saying they didn't think it was the same but I'm saying that that in this this Revelation that Moses have has it's all it all comes together together well but and then they receive the land it's like there's something related to that as well if we think about this anthropologically if all these fragmented tribal groups going back tremendous amount of time each had a God and to some degree their association with that God was a pointer to what was transcended and then the tribes unified then there was all these multiple names of God you see that the Mesopotamian creation stories because Marduk has like 200 names and each of those names is a different aspect of Marta but each of those names was a separate tribal God and so well that's God and this tribe thinks no that's God and this tribe thinks no that's God and and then the tribes come together and they think well in some weird way all of that or what's common among all of that is God and so you and that's part of the building of this hierarchy you're not saying the Israelite tribes did that well no I I don't know because they all had Abraham they all had the same God got rather vague when they were captive but they should understand it at aspects and it's it's fine it doesn't it doesn't crash that say the the the the the the sacred story but you can see the same happening in the time of Plato the same thing is going on where you have these people starting to get a sense of there's something behind these phenomena there's something behind it's like is it is it the spirit of water is it the quality of waters the quality of fire is the quality of this and like it's like no no no and then finally moving on to this notion of being or this and it's outside of nature as well well I would say the biblical story and I don't know how to conceptualize this I mean I think biologically and evolutionarily over the whole span of I I don't want to say I think over the span of cosmic time but I'm not in the conceptual world that has its borders at six thousand or twenty five thousand years and so there's a prehistory to all of this history and God only knows what was happening in the tribal communities that we have no record of no at some point they were fragmented no no no no no no by that time they've aggregated to a tremendous degree but before that who knows for how long sorry Elohim is a plural form isn't it so so there's they would I mean one of the extraordinary things with this text and uh it it strikes me a little more going through it uh in this group is this monotheistic assertion of you know the self-affirmation I am you know I am into the unity exactly yeah um but there's clearly obviously at one level the surrounding Nations all with their their gods um and presumably some sort of ancestral memory perhaps of a of a period and and indeed the continuing temptation to forms of idolatry so that this has to be this integration you think it's such a miracle because what we're faced with isn't a Unity it's it's an incredible plethora of diverse forms and so to even have the you the and of people and their diverse abilities and and proclivities and to to get even a glimmer of the idea that well no in some way that's that's Transcendent and incomprehensible but also necessary all of this diversity is also held together and must be held together in a Unity it has to be a unity and and I think because there can't be more than one I am that I am right there can't be more than one whose Essence is existence is so there can't be more there can't be two existences right so that's the scandal of that asserted over all the diverse right absolutely so I think what you're seeing in just from chapters four onwards is just the sort of unpacking the unfolding of what we of those those insights that uh we do say when they have mystical experiences they do say that they get a deaf a direct apprehension of a pre-linguistic Unity right that it's like the scales fell from my eyes and I could see everything in its totality one thing the Oneness of everything but you could put that as the easterners do into a Buddhist framework or a Hindu framework and that would be different because that's just that's a monism or a pantheism whereas this is monotheism God is separate from creation well there is that element of it creation is completely dependent upon confidence technology is still I mean the always having to try and tread this tight rope between monism and dualism because we want to say that creation and Creator are actually distinct that's just absolutely crucial there's kind of there's God's being and then there's borrowed being right it's being that is there's participative being of creation and unparticipated being of God but you're almost saying as if we have to say it this way otherwise you know our thinking goes wrong right whereas what you're saying is what the Bible says itself when you look at at uh concepts of the Holy Mountain like like the the Greek pantheon when you think of Gods like Zeus who who who ruled over the Titans and who was in some sense an emergent monotheistic God do you see do you see Zeus as a as as merely a god of nature do you see a glimmer in that at least of the idea that there's some Transcendent Unity that's outside the natural order well I think there's a reaching and a groping is a revolutionary God Zeus is not Zeus is not the same as this the the pen the Pagan pantheons the cosmogony in particular is presented as a series of revolutions and so there is within within the Pagan's fear there is what like Christians and and many monotheists later will have this idea the rebellion of the angels that is that there are multiple gods like there are multiple principalities but they they take their they try to take their power from above and so Zeus you know Saturn castrates his father and then Zeus takes power from from his own father I mean if there are hints of it in in Greek polytheism if you think of of The Iliad which is really the foundational kind of theological text for for ancient Greece you've got you know his use is both a kind of capricious impact husband um but he's also there are flashes I think it's it's just right right in the first few lines of The Iliad is this this Dios de tele that the will of Zeus was accomplished through so there's this idea that the whole of The Iliad is sort of fated almost as kind of a providential monotheistic providentialism you could say there are glimmers try to make Zeus into something like that this brings us actually it's ambiguous yes I mean there's a the the question in a sense that again this is slightly off topic but the the big question that given is asking right I mean the about the uh you know the fall of the Roman Empire the the the um the the fall of the classical culture and the rise of barbarism as as uh Gibbon puts it and of course by barbarism he means Christianity that question of why why was Christianity able to take over the the Roman Empire why wasn't it the mithras cult or or some other you know popular religion and I think one answer to that question is in fact monotheism which is basically derived from this text now it's a unifying for us and and of course because there were monotheistic that there were monotheistic tendencies in Greek philosophy but not in the culture I mean the Persian Empire as well like it was there yeah we were discussing this yesterday I mean you know a Pantheon of gods if you've got a whole sort of group of often kind of quarreling gods there isn't a sort of single discernible Divine will that you can act upon as a people right right so you're fragmented right well it's a reflection of fragmentation of culture I would say well if you look at Mesopotamia what happens is that the Mesopotamian gods are are multiple and then they're threatened by Tiamat who's the force of chaos essentially and under the pressure of the threat they organize themselves into a hierarchy and a new God is born and that's mardic and mardic has these interesting features they say about Martika his eyes all the way around his head so he's attention and he speaks magic words so he'll he'll speak the the cosmos into being out or the day Sky into being out of the night sky so he's he's attention in magic words and the Mesopotamians figured out this is something you know that the highest God when you're confronted by chaos the gods have to organize themselves into a hierarchy such that attention and the word are put at the Pinnacle and then the Mesopotamian Emperor was charged with being a good Marduk he had a moral duty to do that and at the New Year ceremony they used to take him out of the city and strip him of his Emperor clothes and the priest would slap him with a glove and say repent how did you not pay attention and speak properly this year how were you not a good Avatar of Marduk and then the emperor would have to say well here's all the reasons I wasn't good and then they would re they would in a ritual they would reenact the Battle of the Gods and the triumph over over tyamat and reconstitute the cosmos and you can see a real yearning towards uh monotheism there and and also that revelation of something that's quite close to the notion of the of the word right because Arctic is definitely a master of fetched but listening to you has struck me a kind of Forerunner of humses Leviathan The War of all against all the station is actually a symbol of tmac what Stephen said earlier struck me deeply here you have this totality of Egypt and only a higher a stronger greater totality can answer it you said something like that now that will be the future of humanity as we get more totalitarian well it's so interesting why monotheism properly understood will be the only thing able to stand against the world of Xi Jinping and so on well it's so interesting too that the monotheism here in this particular story which is partly why we're concentrating on this story it's a monotheism in the service of those who wrestle with God being being necessarily free on ethical grounds from tyranny and so the monotheism is in service of that freedom from tyranny properly understood and that's partly what makes it not a tyrannical monotheism in and of itself I wouldn't say monotheism in the service okay then you get to the celestial Butler almost I'm kidding you all right all right so so then in other words that reveals itself in the eyes yeah that's right it's an outrage for a human made in His image to dominate any other human made in His image and so freedom is an essential of that vision of God right well that's quite that's quite the vision of a unifying totality it's not a tyrant absolutely it's the thing that but not monocleism in the service of anything right I'm right I'm kidding no no I spoke I spoke improperly it's it's because God is that which calls you to the freedom and there you go it reveals Itself by the way Douglas mentioned I'm sorry oh it's a quickie uh you mentioned Elohim is is the the the Torah word Biblical word for God in the Universal god Jehovah of course the way the Israelites would know him uh and and it's in the plural and and many people know this but it's very important in this this a lot of people don't know every time Elohim is used uh in the Bible it is with a singular verb Hebrew has singular and plural verbs so just know that there is never a a hint that Elohim that God the god of of the creation which is Genesis 1 1 is Elohim is any inspiration in the beginning is created in the singular it's not baru they created it's Bara created singular despite the fact that the name is plural it's just like the word fish is singular and plural but so you could say I I have a fish and his name is Jerry right right right but I have fish and their names are but if you only have fish with the singular the fact that it is even a plural term is irrelevant I think it's a plural term because it was the way of saying this God encompasses all that is Godly and all gods that's my own Theory I have no idea that that is true but just important to know there's no compromise and there's compromises with monotheism on the part of the Jews in the Bible regularly but not on the part of the Torah one one thing I know we're not going to read through these genealogies here at the end of chapter six uh and these are the names of and the sons of and the sons but I do want to make a point about them just quickly um because you know we're talking about uh you know about the unity and its relation to particulars and you might say you know one of the challenges of life is how do you interpret the chaos of experience right and Jordan you've talked about this a lot how narrative is a way of fixing the endless multiplicity of you know the the being itself into a way that we can interpret it and understand ourselves and memory is necessary to narrative right because you if you don't have any history you've nothing with which to interpret the world you don't even know couldn't even recognize yourself in the mirror without you know a memory of what you close together nothing holds together at all and so one of the things I think is so interesting with this genealogy right is that what it's what it's doing right here is giving us the the genealogy of Aaron and Moses it really ends like they're born of these people who were born of these and these and it actually turns out that if you look do the math here that you know Aaron and Moses who are brothers very interestingly you know there's something like the great grandsons of Levi himself and of course Levi is one of the 12 sons of of Jacob or Israel and of course he is the grandson of Abraham himself and so what you have in this is being established actually quite economically it sounds like you continuity a historical continuity that takes Abraham sorry Aaron and and Moses all the way back it's only a few generations to Abraham himself and God's covenant and so at some level what what I think this book is creating in that section but which it is doing at a larger level in Exodus itself is creating a kind of history but you could call it maybe a kind of memory of redemption a narrative frame within which you know it stabilizes so that we can hear and understand and indeed enter into the story ancestral world because I add to that idea well I learned from the Jews bubble Dennis is you know Rabbi sax for example says if you have any project that lasts more than a single generation you need schools and you need history otherwise you don't have transmission and that's incredibly practical today America used to have public education in the public collapsed the American Republic is literally suicidal the Transmissions broken down yeah well when you can't trust the Agents of the state with your children that's an indication of the breakdown of trust in the most fundamental way yeah and but the very story about America right was thrown out was right right well you need uniting stories clearly because otherwise we're not United that's that's how it goes and if we're not United then we fight the United story given today is actually suicidal yeah yeah we're United in an awful past yeah that's right we're United in our guilt and nihilism is it not linked to monotheism because I mean there's a there's a narrative I said well a counter narrative to monotheism which links monotheism directly to violence right that and and this you find this in in the enlightenment you find it quite recently there's a distinguished German egyptologist actually called Jan asman who uh quite explicitly links monotheism to exclusionary violence right and so of course the thought is polytheistic societies they are much more tolerant right because of course yeah yeah but this is well it's it to me to me it seems that that the insistence at the moment is something like this that the central animating Spirit certainly of the West is Satan himself I mean that's what I really mean that that's what it looks like it's like well it's all tyranny in power and it's all hell that we've produced and there's nothing but oppression it's like well who do you think's in charge here exactly what case are you making here and that's that's the case that seems to be being made to me I think at least it's the spirit of Cain the accusation is the spirit of Keynes has been in charge all along and all your protestations to the contrary are merely rationalizations on your part for your fundamental drive to power and oppression and that's the servitude we need to be let out of right right well of course of course and maybe the whole bloody thing should be brought down because of it I mean that's the claim that's that certainly is that not the Marxist claim as far as I can tell exists should be destroyed with the postmodern Notions that there's no unifying Grand narrative it's like well what I mean is that that's that's that claim is precisely we're living under the slavery of that claim that is our Egypt that claim out of which we need to be liberated and find our story and find the story that connects us together yes that's the idea right to revivify the dead father and so that's hopefully what we're doing it at least for us in this Exodus exploration maybe maybe this is a good place in Storm Bay because we're starting a new chapter and that was a good closing discussion and we've gone a bit over time today so perfect so thank you all gentlemen much appreciated and to the camera crew again to all those of you who are watching and listening we definitely appreciate your time and attention and your what participation in what we hope is a journey forward and upward part of the reason that the first biblical series I did was serious was because I approached the text as if it might have something to teach me well the practice of this right now part of what like you were talking about Dennis earlier that everything's a miracle the birth of an ant is a miracle like us being or having this discussion we're increasingly in a culture where our engagement with things is so bifurcated we're not allowed to even engage with the full perspective of of the other side when the 10 plagues are listed at the Passover seder the the Jew puts the pinky into the cup of wine we drink four cups of wine those who can handle it by can't and and you you remove some wine with each plague as your way of saying I'm not going to increase but decrease my happiness over their suffering [Music] thank you [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: George Philip Podcast.

Views: 31,201

Keywords: Jordan B Peterson, Jordan B Peterson Clips, Exodus, Biblical Serious, The Story of Adam And Eve, Jesus, Apostle Joshua Selma, Bill Graham, Miles Munroe, Joel Osteen, TD Jakes, TB Joshua, Pastor Ezekiel, Pastor Ng'ang'a, Prophet Owuor, Sadhguru, Andrew Tate, Jordan Peterson, Feminist, LGBTQ, Euros2025, France, Germany, Messi, Christiano Ronaldo, Mbappe, Khaby Lame, Bad boys, Will Smith, Candace Owen, Rihanna, Trump, Biden, Russia

Id: -I_aCIDGVTs

Length: 140min 37sec (8437 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 31 2023