Exodus 13 – The requirements of observing this
pilgrimage-festival are outlined. The
importance of the memory for their children is stressed. So, ways of actually putting the memory on their
bodies—the phylacteries worn on the body—are stressed. Schocken’s note draws a parallel to the place
in Song of Songs where it says, “Set me as a seal upon your heart . . .upon
your arm” (Song 8:6). The first-born
(males) of every womb are dedicated to the Lord too (redeemed is the word they
use).
The Jews are
not led directly to the land of the Philistines—a route that is not that
long. God worries that the warfare they
would face that way would discourage them and make them want to go back to
Egypt. So they “swing about by way of
the wilderness at the Sea of Reeds” (13:18).
It is not the Red Sea, a translation that is ancient, but rather “suf”
or End Sea. Schocken suggests perhaps a
kind of mythological sea at the end of the world, but he admits no one
knows. They have Joseph’s bones with
them, it says. They camp at Etam at the edge of the wilderness. God “goes before them, by day in a column of
cloud, to lead them the way, by night in a column of fire, to give light to
them, to (be able to) go by day and by night" (Schocken 13:21).
Cassiodorus,
a 6th century monk and thinker, saw the waters of baptism in the waters
crossed here. They are mixed with the blood at the crucifixion. After reading the Epistle of Barnabas, it wouldn’t
surprise me if many Christian apologists saw all these stories as deeply figurative
of Christ.
The Epistle of Barnabas
14 – So, was the promised covenant
actually given by God to the Jews?
Yes, it was “but their sins disqualified them for the possession of it” (176).
The tablets Moses received from God to give his people were broken because the
people did not remain faithful.
This covenant has now come to the
Christian community:
“the Lord Himself . . . conferred it on us, making us the People of the
Inheritance by His sufferings on our behalf” (176).
The “Scripture
tells us how the Father had charged Him to ransom us from the darkness, and
create a holy People for Himself. I, the
Lord your God, have called you in righteousness, the prophet says; I
will hold your hand and strengthen you, and I have appointed you to make a
covenant with the people, and to be a light to the nations; to open the eyes of the blind, to loose the
captives from their chains, and to free those that sit in darkness from their
prison-house” (176).
15 – On the Sabbath: “In the Decalogue, when God spoke to
Moses face to face on mount Sinai, we read, Also
keep the Lord’s Sabbath holy, with clean hands and a pure heart” (177).
He goes to the
creation story and calculates that since it took God six days to create
everything and “finished [the works of
his hands] on the seventh day” (177), and one day is really equal to a
thousand years, this means that in six thousand years “He is going to bring the
world to an end” (177). His logic escapes me here.
“He will put
an end to the Years of the Lawless One, pass sentence on the godless, transform
the sun and moon and stars, and then, on the seventh Day, enter into His true
rest” (177). The eighth day – which he comes up with out of nowhere – will the
beginning of a new world.
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