With nearly every page turned in the Bible, readers can identify differences in themes, concepts, authors, and historical contexts. Regardless of this diversity and apparent detachment, the Bible still has a remarkable ability to bind all the parts of its unique storyline into a simple, unified message. I find it truly remarkable that though hundreds of years separate the writing of the first pages of Genesis and the last pages of Revelation, each book’s distinctive themes are expressed throughout the entire biblical story. As author and main character of the biblical drama, God is actively creating a unified message throughout the Bible where He can unify the prior themes to the current promises of His people. In Anderson’s book, The Unfolding …show more content…
The descendants increased to a size so large that the King of Egypt became threatened by their presence. Consequently, the Egyptian King forced the children of Jacob into slavery and mandated that all males born were to be killed (Sumney, 80). These stories and themes within Exodus fall in Anderson’s first act of the biblical drama—the formation of God’s people. In this act Moses beat the unruly conditions in order to become a very prominent character in God’s process. I believe this is one example when God makes the impossible seem possible. Instead of Moses being killed at birth, God enables him to do the impossible which consists of living and becoming an important instrument in the formation of God’s people. Not only does Moses end up returning to Egypt to free the oppressed people of God, but he also shows great leadership when helping the Israelites cross the Red Sea. Both of these instances are important in understanding the unified message of the Exodus and God’s covenantal relationship with His …show more content…
God establishes an I-Thou relationship with Moses through their narrative during the scene at the burning bush. Anderson writes, “we cannot know God personally unless God chooses to speak through inspired words and act through liberating power (Anderson, 32).” God revealed himself to Moses to deliver his people from Egypt. God’s personal name, Yahweh, means, “I will be,” or, “to be” in a covenant or a relationship. This reminds us that God does not dwell on the past; He is always looking forward into the future. I think this is a key point in understanding Moses’ importance in the biblical narrative. I think God uses Moses as an instrument to tie the slavery in Egypt to the fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant. I also think God uses Moses to bring people closer to Him and to help them restore their faithfulness in the covenant. This is a perfect example of how God uses scripture to talk to Christians
Moses was a major character in the fact that he was the reason his son, Adam, became the man that he had become. “If just once in all my born days you’d say a good thing to me” (Fast 3), Moses stated. Moses wanted Adam to be raised the way that Moses was raised and respect it. Adam did not like how strict his father was to him and did not want to be raised like he was. “Maybe it’s time I just went and did something without my father”
It is the reader and his or her interpretive community who attempts to impose a unified reading on a given text. Such readers may, and probably will, claim that the unity they find is in the text, but this claim is only a mask for the creative process actually going on. Even the most carefully designed text can not be unified; only the reader's attempted taming of it. Therefore, an attempt to use seams and shifts in the biblical text to discover its textual precursors is based on a fundamentally faulty assumption that one might recover a stage of the text that lacked such fractures (Carr 23-4).
When God first approaches Moses in the form of a burning bush, God says “I have witnessed the affliction of my people in Egypt and have heard their cry of complaint against their slave drivers, so I know well what they are suffering. Therefore I have come down to rescue them from the hands of the Egyptians and lead them out of that land into a good and spacious land,” (Exodus 3:7). Moses however, questioned God’s judgement, saying, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and lead the Israelites out of Egypt?” (Exodus 3:11). Moses continues to question God throughout the rest of the chapter, but eventually begins his journey to rescue his
Metanarrative Essay The Biblical metanarrative can be explained by a Christian as the true and triumphant story from the beginning in Genesis until the future is prophesied in Revelation. Others who may not be a Christian do not understand the true power and love God has over us and for us and may just simply see it as a story or a rule book that they don’t want to follow. They see the Bible and all the things and plans God has for us and our lives and just think they don’t want any part of it and instead they live in sin. It is important that these people not only learn the true story but understand it as well.
Moses' journey begins in Egypt. This is a land where the Pharaoh has ultimate control and power over the people. Campbell refers to this greedy, egocentric, possessive leader as the tyrant. At this time, Egypt is noticing a huge increase in the number of Hebrew slaves (Exodus 1:9). In order to maintain possession of the land, Pharaoh must stifle the future threat that the increasing population of Israelites represent. To do this he orders the first born son of every Hebrew to be thrown into the Nile. However, baby Moses floats to the Pharaoh's daughter and Moses is raised as an Egyptian prince. He grows up different than any other Hebrew. He learns how to become soldier for his Pharaoh, but something is always troubling him. One day Moses sees an Egyptian striking a Hebrew slave and Moses intervenes and kills the Egyptian (Exodus 2:12). The next day he sees two Hebrews struggling, and tries to intervene, but he discovers that his murder of yesterday is known. This conflict symbolizes what Campbell says is the "call t...
N.T Wright (2008) stated that “When we read the scriptures as Christians, we read it precisely as people of the new covenant and of the new creation” (p.281). In this statement, the author reveals a paradigm of scriptural interpretation that exists for him as a Christian, theologian, and profession and Bishop. When one surveys the entirety of modern Christendom, one finds a variety of methods and perspectives on biblical interpretation, and indeed on the how one defines the meaning in the parables of Jesus. Capon (2002) and Snodgrass (2008) offer differing perspectives on how one should approach the scriptures and how the true sense of meaning should be extracted. This paper will serve as a brief examination of the methodologies presented by these two authors. Let us begin, with an
The Bible is a large and rather confusing book of laws, parables and true stories. The most important story in the Bible, in the story of Jesus ' birth. These two passages which tell of Jesus ' birth are, especially because Christians, at least the majority of them, base their beliefs on it, along with his death. Matthew and Luke are the only two books out of the sixty-six in the bible which give detailed descriptions of the monumental event. There is the main idea in American culture that the Birth story is clear, that there are not any issues between Matthew and Luke 's stories. However, there are many conflicting facts in the two books, although most of them are easily thought, though, there are some that are a little harder to explain,
... Print. The. 2003 Hartman, Louis F. & Lella, Alexander A. The Anchor Bible, The Book Of Daniel. New Haven & London: Yale University Press. Print, 1978 Cook, Stephen L. Apocalyptic Literature.
New Revised Standard Version. New York: American Bible Society, 1989. Print. The. Russell, Eddie.
Following the creation story of the book of Genesis is the book of Exodus. In Genesis, God promised Abraham a “great nation from which all nations of the earth will be blessed (Gen 12:1-3)” and in Exodus God completes this promise through the creation of the holy nation, Israel. Exodus tells the story of the God who rescued his people out of Egypt because of the promise he had made to Abraham. God calls to Moses to complete his promise. God’s call to Moses is not only important because he liberates the Israelites but also because God reveals His name(s) along with His true Nature. God calls upon Moses and tells him that He’s back to help the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt and that Moses is to lead them. God then gives him full instructions on what to tell the Pharaoh and, more importantly, the Israelites, who are promised, land “flowing with milk and honey”.
Like no other prophet before him, Moses was “a vessel for displaying God 's awesome powers…” (Jen Saunders, "What Significance Does Moses Have to the Hebrew People?") This not only allowed the Israelites to leave Egypt, but protected them along their way to a new land and cemented their faith in G-d. His most notable act was the ten plagues. G-d channeled his divine powers into Moses’s human vessel and made him turn the Nile into blood, let frogs, bugs, wild animals and locusts overrun Egypt, give disease to their livestock, riddle the people with boils, strike down a thunderstorm of hail and fire, bury them in darkness, and kill off every nonbelievers first born. (Chabad, “The Ten Plagues”) This certainly put the fear of G-d into the Egyptians. His next big act would be splitting the Red Sea. With the raise of Moses’s staff, G-d allowed him to part the sea, protecting the Hebrews of the advancing Egyptian army. Instances like this occurred, just enough for the Hebrews to reinforce their belief in the one and only, to praise no other and to follow the rules of no other. Through demonstrations, such as striking water out of a rock, Moses was the catalyst for Hebrews to accept their G-d. He was able to captivate a people into a zealous belief that lasted for many years to
Moses, the man upon whom God built the nation of Israel, brought his people out of the land of Egypt. By God’s power, he divided the waters of the Red Sea. By God’s power, summoned manna in the wilderness. By God’s power, he led the Israelites despite their obstinate attitudes. He is a greatly respected patriarch of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam alike. But, imagine his legacy to be non-existent. Imagine that he died under the will of the God who sent him. Exodus 4:24-26 is brief story that nearly describes such a scenario. This exegetical study will partake in an attempt to better understand Exodus 4:24-26 through examining its historical and literary context and looking into the scholarly opinions about the topic. The proposal this paper will make is that God is in control of everything. Though He had just called Moses to rescue the nation of Israel, He shows Moses and family his complete sovereignty.
New International Commentary on the New Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997. Osborne, Grant R. Revelation. Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2002.
... people. It also shows the dependence of people on God. Moses was a man of courage who sought to see the face of the God. He received the laws of the lord and made sacrifices for them when they sinned. Moses acted as a mediator between Yahweh and his people (Woolfe).
Answering these questions is the purpose of this essay. I begin by arguing that the Bible cannot be adequately understood independent of its historical context. I concede later that historical context alone however is insufficient, for the Bible is a living-breathing document as relevant to us today as it was the day it was scribed. I conclude we need both testimonies of God at work to fully appreciate how the Bible speaks to us.