I've been enjoying Exodus way more than I imagined I would as well. It's been fun going in with the image I had in my head of Charlton Heston as Moses and then fitting him into the actual story. There's some wild, powerful imagery in Exodus. My favorite is probably near the end of chapters 29-34 (pg. 161) when Moses was going up and down Mt. Sinai, communicating with God and the Israelites and each time he came back down to the people his face was glowing because he had been speaking with God. I don't know why, but I just love that. He was freaking everybody out with his glowing God-tan. That's just cool stuff right there.

Then I was completely overwhelmed by the immense detail given in the description of how The Dwelling and all its furnishings were supposed to be prepared. I want to see photos of this place of worship. Better yet, I want to be a fly on the wall during the ceremony. I'm oddly fascinated and put off by ritual at the same time. These ceremonies sound visceral and complex and all around incredible. There must be diagrams that people have drawn out to show what some of this might look like and I plan to find them.

READ. THINK. PRAY. LIVE. -- Your Christian faith is far more developed than mine, so I think the last two steps come a little more naturally to you, but I'm certainly not just reading either. What I've been doing is a whole exercise in spiritual appreciation taking on these stories. I'm coming to know the immensity of the Bible myself, which is great fun for me. So far, I'm all at once more impressed and confounded with Christianity than I was before this started. I'm impressed with people that are able to take these texts and make meaningful sense of them. I'm also glad to see that if people really embrace the Bible, then they won't likely be able to come to narrow-minded decrees for all the world about the way life should or shouldn't be. The stories I've seen thus far are so vast that they cannot be easily filtered down to simple rules for our lives about what exactly is and isn't permissible in Christian life. I'm reassured by my own reading that anything more than the most shallow understanding has to come from a deep, more than intellectual, consideration of these writings. And yet I am frustrated to know so many fundamentalists still stop with their surface-level interpretations.

Thank you for sharing your passion along the way, it's been helpful to me.

Yes indeedly, all those looks at perspective are definitely helpful to keep in mind.

I of course can't claim to know what a loving god would do. Nice, I like what you did there. :)

Thank you for sharing these commentaries. They are somewhat helpful to me. At the very least all this helps me to realize, as you said, "even the most scholarly minds have not mastered the Biblical text." That is something I should keep in mind as I read through other challenging pieces of the Bible. I also like the idea of intentionally leaving Scripture somewhat ambiguous. I think this forces us to really question and consider what is being said and not just quickly accept what we read on a superficial level.

"The mystery of God is what my faith is all about, and I always like to contend with those who are certain of their 'facts.'"

I very much appreciate your approach and am glad to have someone like you here to interact with on these questions.

I'm glad to know you and Rosalie were both somewhat unclear about what was going on in this section as well. Also, I was mostly joking about text actually being missing, but it sure felt like the paragraph we had problems with didn't belong.

I wonder how much hyperbole was a factor in the story of Exodus in trying to hammer home a point about God's absolute dominion over humanity. I don't have evidence, but I imagine hyperbole was a common literary tool for Hebrew people during the time this was all written. I definitely can't literally interpret the repeated horror inflicted on the people of Egypt and still see God as a loving god, especially knowing He intentionally made Pharaoh stubborn time and time again.

I'm probably not really touching on your concerns and I know I have a lot more to read before I can make much sense of this story, but trying to understand the techniques used by the person writing this story helps to diffuse some of my desire to question God's methods.

Regarding your logging in and still having to put in your name issue: that has not been my experience. Once I log in and then come back into the blog, when I visit a post page with the comment box, it automatically shows me as "Gregory" and I'm good to go. So, I dunno. I'll think about it some more and see if I come up with an idea. What web browser are you using?

The kids didn't recognize the Bob Marley classic?? Oy, that's just sad. We're not old, Rosalie! I fear for today's youth. Fortunately they have good people like you keeping them in line.

I watched 'The Ten Commandments' when it was on around Easter time. It's really quite a film and Charlton Heston as Moses was sweet casting. I don't remember Aaron. IMDB says John Carradine played Aaron, if that helps.

I was thinking about your second question some more and if I were going to pick someone out from the reading so far who I've related to the most, it would be Joseph. I respected his straightforward, accepting response to impossibly difficult situations and then his very human, emotional response to his family. Despite how he had been wronged by his brothers he still obviously deeply cared for them and didn't hold grudges in the end. He's my kind of guy for those reasons.

I totally dig and that's what I thought you were getting at. I just wanted to be sure.