Exodus: How It Passes By Leilani Hall

I have chosen to talk about the story of exodus from the bible, the exodus movie, and the contemporary poem “How it passes” by Leilani Hall. Naturally I was drawn to Greek mythology as my topic first but, since I learned much more about the biblical stories this semester I wanted to discuss this side of mythology instead. I personally feel like these stories affect people more in their day to day lives than the stories of Greek myth. Although Greek mythology remains influential, biblical mythology is considered a worshiped religion by a vast amount of people around the world. I was also very interested in the stories not having grown up in a religious home and only hearing or reading them out of curiosity growing up, and never had the pleasure of discussing the deeper meaning until this class.

I chose exodus specifically

because it most contrasts the way I thought people saw God.

Anytime I have gone to church we talk about the new testament, and exodus showed me how the new testament God and old testament God are very different. In exodus God seems more like a jealous tyrant, smiting those who do not believe in him with plagues that kill and harm the people of Egypt. With the last plague even killing the first born sons of the non-hebrews of Egypt. In churches I’ve gone to today they teach how forgiving God is for any digressions you have, and even say that doubt in faith is normal and will only make your faith that much stronger once it is gone. This just seems like an entirely different religion than the one displayed in exodus. This is carried through even more in the movie exodus as God is portrayed as a child. This portrayal, in my opinion, fits the actions and decisions he makes throughout the story.

Children can be rash and are more likely to solve their problems with acts of violence and revenge. At least if God is young I can understand why God would act this way during the founding of his religion. God is not the only one portrayed differently in the movie exodus. Moses is also much more violent than that of the one we read in class. Through reading the scripture I imagined Moses as a kind protestor, more of a Mahatma Gandhi type, leaving the violence to God. But the Moses in in the movie is merciless, even going to the point of training the Hebrews in combat. Even when Ramesses and the Egyptian people are at their lowest, after the deaths of all the first born sons, all Moses has to say is that “No Hebrew children died.” This is not the compassionate Moses that we read about in Exodus.
Reading exodus also broadened my definition of mythology. Before the class I too thought that Mythology was exclusive to stories that were inherently false, rather than stories that we are unsure whether to be true. This is because of how our definition of “myth” has changed over time, now being utilized more frequently for “a false belief” instead of how we have used it in class. I think that this contributes to the fact that many people, especially people of faith, don’t want to group mythology with christianity. I used to be apart of this group until I saw the similarities in several stories between greek mythology and the Old Testament. One of these stories can be seen with the contemporary poem “How it passes” by Leilani Hall.