Biblical Instructions versus Conservative Interpretation

[johnmarc]

I have been on this forum long enough to recognize that one of the staples here is, How can you believe/support an evil God? The proponent of this position continues to list the many negative attributes of God in the hope that the conservative Christian turns away.

I submit that this line of questioning is aimed squarely at the symptoms of the issue and not the cause. As a result an effective case cannot be made.

I further submit that the underlying factors that determine a literal interpretation of the Bible have little to do with the Bible. It has to do with conservatism itself. I have yet to find a conservative Christian who does not wholly believe and support what they find in the Bible---independent of the Bible. In other words, if the Bible did not exist, their beliefs would be the same.

They are foisting their own personal and deeply held positions and prejudices onto the Bible---not the other way around. With over one thousand interpretations of Christianity, it is easy to understand why this is so. The Bible becomes the mouthpiece (and the whipping boy) for positions that are read into the Bible. The Bible isnt changing Christians; Christians are changing the Bible.

If any of this is true, atheists are attacking the messenger---so to speak. The real target is conservatism itself. What is it about the worldview of conservative individuals that cause them to cherry pick through the Bible to confirm what they already believe? And in this present day and time there is much to choose, but dissing the Bible wont make a dent because none of this is about the Bible.

Question for Debate:

(A) Does the Bible mold Christians into followers of Jesus?

Or

(B) Do Christians manipulate the Bible into support for their pre-existing positions?

[Malachi-Zede-El]

Biblical interpretations on all sides are, of course, subjective; and since we don't even know the identity of most biblical authors the interpretations and speculations have always been and will continue to be rampant. For the most part however, it seems that interpretation has everything to do with indoctrination and emotion and nothing to do with absolute or objective truth. When it comes to an actual 'God' is it even possible for any of us to know what we are talking about?

Out of all the many Diffrent Schools of Though / Teaching , Which Diffrent Schools of Though / Teaching are truely the words of God . Think before you make another mistake ok .

[johnmarc]

I return again to your original complaint about biblical conservatism; it implicitly operates on assumptions that are alien to the Bible, unacknowledged prejudices that cause conservatives to cherry pick passages to support their position. My so far unchallenged observation is that liberalism does the same thing, exchanging inerrancy and the assumption of historical fact with the very opposite. And it does this not because it's more theological sound or true to the authors' intent, but because of factors that have nothing to do with the Bible.

So, if conservatism is a problem because it's not about the Bible, liberalism suffers the same defect. I still wonder what your beef with conservatism is. The best I can come up with is that the problem with conservatism is that it is 1) not liberalism; and 2) it's probably false. That liberalism evades the first and probably the second (by dint of making no theological/ontological claims) criticisms does not entail that it's somehow better; just different.

It's hard to see, then, how atheists could be erecting a straw man when there's no man.

Your unchallenged observation was answered thusly:

Liberal Christians accept the Historical Critical research that has been ongoing now for four hundred years. It is a scientific/objective venture that has laid bare assumptions of a literal God and literal events. What remains are thematic notions that still make sense to a modern audience.

Why is historical/critical scholarship not more theologically sound, if it is based on scientific, objective, critical research in schools of theology and about theology?

Why is different, in this case, is not better? If we go back to the water to wine miracle, liberal Christians will differ with conservative Christians. Liberal Christians will claim that the miracle was a foreshadowing of a personal transformation ethic that is supported by Jesus claim that, The Kingdom of God is within us. Our goal is to become better people and primary to that ethic is the treatment of others. A conservative interpretation holds that Jesus really did it (and therefore my God is bigger than your God) Those interpretations are not just different; one is better than the other.

The only kind of interpretive violence there is occurs when we distort a text from its original meaning. When I read the Bible and find that it is false on a conservative reading, that does not mean that the conservative reading is a damaging one. For the record, Spong's reading is no less damaging then a modern one, his being post-modern. There's no assurance that postmodern theology somehow better apprehends the Bible; on its own terms it's simply incapable of saying that some interpretation is better than another. From what you've said, I read you as voluntarily divesting yourself of any authority on the matter.

I highlighted the sentence that I would like to respond to. Are you claiming that four hundred years of scholarship---scientific, objective, historical/critical studies of the Bible are no better at apprehending the Bible than a piece-meal select through the book to justify firmly held preconditions? Historical/Critical scholarship claims that Matthew (whoever he was) probably firmly believed that everything that he wrote was true. They also confirm that he was wrong.

With that in the back of our heads, we can head off in two different directions. One is to trash the book as hopelessly archaic and out of touch with a modern people, or we can mine the book for truths that continue to resonate with modernity. I choose number two. It is not just different than a conservative interpretation, it is better.

That's an insignificant example. Spong denies that the biggest theological propositions in the Bible are true or even coherent, whilst simultaneously affirming that their loss is not the least bit significant theologically. Honouring Matthew intentions would include taking him to literally believe that there is a God and that Jesus of Nazareth literally was resurrected. In this sense I find conservatism to be much more faithful to the text, while liberals are off somewhere else superimposing the post-modern onto the ancient and accusing the conservatives of irrelevance.

It is not an insignificant example. Matthew did not see bodies rising from graves, he was not there to see the Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem, he knowingly distorted Jesus genealogy to produce a pattern of fourteens that did not exist, he knew nothing of Jesus childhood, he did not see Jesus literally resurrected. All of that is fiction and all of that is plot. The themes of Resurrection, Justice, Submission, Fulfillment, and Entitlement remain. Jesus words remain. He was not God, but he may have been in communion with God.

I certainly do not want this thread to be hijacked into a gay rights argument and I will ask the moderators to close it if that should happen, but I do want to demonstrate the difference between a conservative and liberal interpretation:

A conservative/literal interpretation would be to stone gays. At some point in history and at the bequest of the Bible, that happened. The modern church ignores the harshest of Biblical penalties for homosexuality by just condemning it (as per Biblical fiat). But as soon as we recognize that the Bible is not reliably literal, literal fiats can be laid aside. A liberal interpretation holds that Biblical themes support the notion of extending rights and privileges to outcasts and the down trodden. Jesus touched lepers and we should touch diversity. Both interpretations are loyal to the Bible and they are not just different, depending on where one stands on this issue, one is correct and the other is incorrect. Can you actually place no value judgment on these two interpretations? Are they just different?

[Adamoriens]

Your unchallenged observation was answered thusly:

Liberal Christians accept the Historical Critical research that has been ongoing now for four hundred years. It is a scientific/objective venture that has laid bare assumptions of a literal God and literal events. What remains are thematic notions that still make sense to a modern audience.

Why is historical/critical scholarship not more theologically sound, if it is based on scientific, objective, critical research in schools of theology and about theology?

Why is different, in this case, is not better? If we go back to the water to wine miracle, liberal Christians will differ with conservative Christians. Liberal Christians will claim that the miracle was a foreshadowing of a personal transformation ethic that is supported by Jesus claim that, The Kingdom of God is within us. Our goal is to become better people and primary to that ethic is the treatment of others. A conservative interpretation holds that Jesus really did it (and therefore my God is bigger than your God) Those interpretations are not just different; one is better than the other.

It does not follow from liberal Christians' acceptance of biblical criticism that they have a better theology, merely that it's different one. I'm actually having difficulty imagining how such an evaluation would work. A close analogy might be one's trusting a friend's testimony about some miracle that positively transformed her life, but then subsequently finding out that no such miracle occurred, and that the transformation didn't occur and/or was self-directed. Originally you interpreted her words literally and reacted accordingly, but after you cease believing in her miracle and/or her transformation. It doesn't follow from the falsification of your beliefs of her transformation that your original interpretation was misguided, or that it would be more correct to now retroactively interpret her past testimony as purely metaphorical inspiration. Perhaps that would be the pragmatically best thing to do to preserve your esteem for her and your friendship, but you wouldn't be in any place to say that the false interpretation wasn't the most rational one. Maybe this is the source of our apparent disagreement.

I highlighted the sentence that I would like to respond to. Are you claiming that four hundred years of scholarship---scientific, objective, historical/critical studies of the Bible are no better at apprehending the Bible than a piece-meal select through the book to justify firmly held preconditions? Historical/Critical scholarship claims that Matthew (whoever he was) probably firmly believed that everything that he wrote was true. They also confirm that he was wrong.

We cannot equivocate postmodern theology with biblical scholarship. The former would deny that the metaphysical postulates of Christianity are significant when deciding what is "Christian". The latter ignores the question, while noting that the biblical narratives revolve around selfsame central metaphysical posits.

I certainly do not want this thread to be hijacked into a gay rights argument and I will ask the moderators to close it if that should happen, but I do want to demonstrate the difference between a conservative and liberal interpretation:

A conservative/literal interpretation would be to stone gays. At some point in history and at the bequest of the Bible, that happened. The modern church ignores the harshest of Biblical penalties for homosexuality by just condemning it (as per Biblical fiat). But as soon as we recognize that the Bible is not reliably literal, literal fiats can be laid aside. A liberal interpretation holds that Biblical themes support the notion of extending rights and privileges to outcasts and the down trodden. Jesus touched lepers and we should touch diversity. Both interpretations are loyal to the Bible and they are not just different, depending on where one stands on this issue, one is correct and the other is incorrect. Can you actually place no value judgment on these two interpretations? Are they just different?

I'm still quite confused. You state that liberal and conservative interpretations are loyal to the Bible. But whence cometh this?

What is it about the worldview of conservative individuals that cause them to cherry pick through the Bible to confirm what they already believe? And in this present day and time there is much to choose, but dissing the Bible wont make a dent because none of this is about the Bible.

What exactly is going on here? That conservative interpretations are sometimes morally repugnant and false is no reason to think that conservative interpretations do not closely approximate the spirit of certain texts, or that more humanistic interpretations are somehow more authentic (and properly representative of Christianity) in virtue of not offending modern sensibilities.

To sum: I'm not opposed to gleaning moral lessons from a metaphysically decrepit Bible, but this approach is not more authoritative or representative of Christianity simply because it's honest with the facts.

[Confused]

Biblical interpretations on all sides are, of course, subjective; and since we don't even know the identity of most biblical authors the interpretations and speculations have always been and will continue to be rampant. For the most part however, it seems that interpretation has everything to do with indoctrination and emotion and nothing to do with absolute or objective truth. When it comes to an actual 'God' is it even possible for any of us to know what we are talking about?

Out of all the many Diffrent Schools of Though / Teaching , Which Diffrent Schools of Though / Teaching are truely the words of God . Think before you make another mistake ok .

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[johnmarc]

Adamoriens,

Let me first of all thank you for this conversation. I find it stimulating and rewarding. And secondly, let me share with you my jealously at your ability to so quickly respond. It will be perhaps a couple of days before I can get back to this, partly because of schedule and partly because you ask good questions.

During this intermission, can you give me a direct answer to this example?

A conservative/literal interpretation would be to stone gays. At some point in history and at the bequest of the Bible, that happened. The modern church ignores the harshest of Biblical penalties for homosexuality by just condemning it (as per Biblical fiat). But as soon as we recognize that the Bible is not reliably literal, literal fiats can be laid aside. A liberal interpretation holds that Biblical themes support the notion of extending rights and privileges to outcasts and the down trodden. Jesus touched lepers and we should touch diversity. Both interpretations are loyal to the Bible and they are not just different, depending on where one stands on this issue, one is correct and the other is incorrect. Can you actually place no value judgment on these two interpretations? Are they just different?

Can you actually place no value judgment on these two interpretations? Are they just 'different'?

[Adamoriens]

A conservative/literal interpretation would be to stone gays. At some point in history and at the bequest of the Bible, that happened. The modern church ignores the harshest of Biblical penalties for homosexuality by just condemning it (as per Biblical fiat). But as soon as we recognize that the Bible is not reliably literal, literal fiats can be laid aside. A liberal interpretation holds that Biblical themes support the notion of extending rights and privileges to outcasts and the down trodden. Jesus touched lepers and we should touch diversity. Both interpretations are loyal to the Bible and they are not just different, depending on where one stands on this issue, one is correct and the other is incorrect. Can you actually place no value judgment on these two interpretations? Are they just different?

Can you actually place no value judgment on these two interpretations? Are they just 'different'?

I think that two things should be clarified, the first being what we mean by "interpretation." So far we've both been using it in the sense of a holistic understanding of the Bible, where the conservative reads the text as entailing the truth of certain historical-metaphysical propositions (God exists, Jesus is his son etc.), and the liberal as entailing more ethereal truths like the imperative for inclusivity and meditation on our finitude etc. But it occurs to me now that the liberal reading is somewhat arbitrary in which themes it chooses to emphasize, and you would say the same for conservatism.

[Adamoriens]

A conservative/literal interpretation would be to stone gays. At some point in history and at the bequest of the Bible, that happened. The modern church ignores the harshest of Biblical penalties for homosexuality by just condemning it (as per Biblical fiat). But as soon as we recognize that the Bible is not reliably literal, literal fiats can be laid aside. A liberal interpretation holds that Biblical themes support the notion of extending rights and privileges to outcasts and the down trodden. Jesus touched lepers and we should touch diversity. Both interpretations are loyal to the Bible and they are not just different, depending on where one stands on this issue, one is correct and the other is incorrect. Can you actually place no value judgment on these two interpretations? Are they just different?

We both have been using "interpretation" to indicate a thematic framework, where conservatives would read the text as entailing certain historical-metaphysical propositions, and the liberal as entailing an imperative to promote inclusiveness and meditation on one's finitude etc. While both views can be supported by biblical reference, to say that either view is the proper interpretation of the whole text would be illegitimate, since both views arise (allegedly) by merely emphasizing certain portions of the text. There is no liberal "taking-into-account" the order to kill gays, which is unsurprising given that both the literal and thematic readings of the order to kill gays are morally unacceptable to the modern liberal. Thus the liberal doesn't even take such passages into consideration thematically. The claim that their interpretation is fully informed by the themes in the text is therefore made less credible. This disparity between liberal emphasis and the actual thematic content is fairly acute in the Old Testament, especially post-Babylon; entire books are filled with invective against such liberal ideals as racial equality/intermarriage, religious pluralism and acceptance of sexual deviance. These passages are ignored by liberals, apparently for no other reason than that they don't fit the liberal ideal.

I agree that the liberal presentation of the Bible is less morally objectionable, since it deliberately excludes offensive themes and so on, but I don't see that it's a better interpretive framework overall, "better" being about interpretive virtues rather than morality. I'm not sure that there is a sensible unified interpretation of the Bible anyway given its diversity; there is only what we prefer to emphasize or ignore.

[ceastman]

To answer the first part of your question is a simple yes. Yes, "Christians" should be molded by the Bible, it is the WORD of GOD. But that being said many "Christians" fail to be molded by the Bible. Why? Because that would require a change in their life and change in their way of thinking. People usually don't like change but we must it is what God desires for one who wants to be a disciple of His. Too many times a person comes to Christ and gets saved and then they stop growing by faith. They got saved by faith but they fail to continue to live by faith. The root word of faith is "persuaded" so they were persuaded by the facts presented in the Bible about God and about Jesus being the Savior of mankind and needing Jesus to get to the Father. Yet once they saved they fail to live by faith. They fail to be persuaded about the truths found in the Word of God so they fail to be shaped into the image of Jesus. It is a sad thing that many Christians stop at saving faith and never experience living by faith.
As for an answer to the second question once again a simple yes. Yes many people will twist the scripture to make it say what they want it to say. The reason, I think is because it is easier to twist the scripture than to be changed by the scripture. Scripture must be viewed with a non-biased eye and we must honestly desire to understand the scripture. A person must be willing to actually study the scriptures and draw out what it means and then make the right applications. Study takes work and today many people just don't want to work at studying the Bible they want an easy spoon-feed answer. Another problem I have seen is that people will mistake a conviction for a Biblical commend. A person might have a conviction about a certain area in life and they try to force it on others as though it was a Biblical mandate. That is very sad and very destructive. The key is to be a good Berean, study the Word of God, ask the Spirit to guide you as you seek to follow Jesus.

[johnmarc]

To answer the first part of your question is a simple yes. Yes, "Christians" should be molded by the Bible, it is the WORD of GOD. But that being said many "Christians" fail to be molded by the Bible. Why? Because that would require a change in their life and change in their way of thinking. People usually don't like change but we must it is what God desires for one who wants to be a disciple of His. Too many times a person comes to Christ and gets saved and then they stop growing by faith. They got saved by faith but they fail to continue to live by faith. The root word of faith is "persuaded" so they were persuaded by the facts presented in the Bible about God and about Jesus being the Savior of mankind and needing Jesus to get to the Father. Yet once they saved they fail to live by faith. They fail to be persuaded about the truths found in the Word of God so they fail to be shaped into the image of Jesus. It is a sad thing that many Christians stop at saving faith and never experience living by faith.
As for an answer to the second question once again a simple yes. Yes many people will twist the scripture to make it say what they want it to say. The reason, I think is because it is easier to twist the scripture than to be changed by the scripture. Scripture must be viewed with a non-biased eye and we must honestly desire to understand the scripture. A person must be willing to actually study the scriptures and draw out what it means and then make the right applications. Study takes work and today many people just don't want to work at studying the Bible they want an easy spoon-feed answer. Another problem I have seen is that people will mistake a conviction for a Biblical commend. A person might have a conviction about a certain area in life and they try to force it on others as though it was a Biblical mandate. That is very sad and very destructive. The key is to be a good Berean, study the Word of God, ask the Spirit to guide you as you seek to follow Jesus.

This would seem to be the argument that Christianity is not endorsed by those who cannot live a Christian life. Never in my life have I believed that the Bible was the word of God and never in my life have I not lived morally, conservatively, respectfully, and fully within the bounds of good citizenship. Lots of folks with 'good behavior' are simply unable to reconcile the bias, contradiction, scientific error, and tribal pettiness that is within the Bible. It is not about behavior, it is about an ancient text bumping up against a modern world.

[johnmarc]

It does not follow from liberal Christians' acceptance of biblical criticism that they have a better theology, merely that it's different one. I'm actually having difficulty imagining how such an evaluation would work. A close analogy might be one's trusting a friend's testimony about some miracle that positively transformed her life, but then subsequently finding out that no such miracle occurred, and that the transformation didn't occur and/or was self-directed. Originally you interpreted her words literally and reacted accordingly, but after you cease believing in her miracle and/or her transformation. It doesn't follow from the falsification of your beliefs of her transformation that your original interpretation was misguided, or that it would be more correct to now retroactively interpret her past testimony as purely metaphorical inspiration. Perhaps that would be the pragmatically best thing to do to preserve your esteem for her and your friendship, but you wouldn't be in any place to say that the false interpretation wasn't the most rational one. Maybe this is the source of our apparent disagreement.

What has slowed down my reply has been this particular paragraph. It has taken me a long time to understand it and I suppose that I still dont. But I am now willing to give it a try. My paraphrase:

That the Bible once loved for its literal truths has been found wanting and now, still in love with the Bible, one manipulates the verses for themes so that this once deep and meaningful relationship can continue to exist.

If I have interpreted your paragraph correctly, it is entirely foreign to me. Generally speaking, those who have deep commitments to a literal Bible and find themselves no longer able to believe, become radical atheists. We have instances of this on this forum. The normal pathway to metaphor is from moderation in the first place. I have been out of this business for a long time now, but during my searching period I met as many as three hundred liberal Christians. In almost every case, these were people who quietly disbelieved. They attended church for many reasons, but never accepted the many impossibilities that were presented from Sunday to Sunday. They were Believers in Exile (Spongs term) It came as a relief to them that others shared their doubts but could still incorporate the symbols of the Bible into a meaningful Christianity. They now take their religion seriously. The Resurrection was no longer about God, but about personal transformation. This is not much of a stretch for someone who never believed in God in the first place, but was in the religion business for many and sundry reasons: family, socialization, moral direction, and liturgy (and personal search). I would venture to guess that there are some of these folk in every church in America and in some cases a sizeable minority. This is usually not a flip-flop, but a more mature understanding.

We cannot equivocate postmodern theology with biblical scholarship. The former would deny that the metaphysical postulates of Christianity are significant when deciding what is "Christian". The latter ignores the question, while noting that the biblical narratives revolve around selfsame central metaphysical posits.

Biblical scholarship can proceed quite unencumbered with postmodern theology. But postmodern theology cannot proceed without Biblical scholarship. Postmodern theology came as quite a surprise to Biblical scholarship---they did not expect this particular Phoenix rising from those particular ashes. Postmodern theology uses Biblical scholarship the way that the evangelical community uses proof texts. (and, yes, I do find that better and not just different)

I'm still quite confused. You state that liberal and conservative interpretations are loyal to the Bible. But whence cometh this?

I was just throwing you a bone. Yes, I can see your point as regards the evangelical community---They discriminate against gays because the Bible tells them to. But there are four points to be made.

The opposite is true as well. They discriminate against gays and search the Bible for support.

Direct literal Biblical instructions are ignored. (Stone gays)

Their case is fatally weakened by literally hundreds of different literal interpretations.

It doesnt matter anyway because the Bible is a fiction.

What exactly is going on here? That conservative interpretations are sometimes morally repugnant and false is no reason to think that conservative interpretations do not closely approximate the spirit of certain texts, or that more humanistic interpretations are somehow more authentic (and properly representative of Christianity) in virtue of not offending modern sensibilities.

I will give you the first half of that, but this is not about offending modern sensibilities. Liberal Christianity won the Civil War. No, they did not physically win it, but were they screeching abolition from the pulpit because they were afraid of offending contemporary modern sensibilities? I submit that they were doing the right thing for the right reason and history has vindicated them. I feel the same way about Progressive Christianity. History will be kind to them. This is not a disco kind of a thing.

As an aside, if there is such a thing as 'right' thing and a 'right' reason, it rather puts to rest your 'no one can know' rationale. (and I think that there is and I think that we can know)

To sum: I'm not opposed to gleaning moral lessons from a metaphysically decrepit Bible, but this approach is not more authoritative or representative of Christianity simply because it's honest with the facts.

To sum: I'm not opposed to gleaning moral lessons from a metaphysically decrepit Bible, because this approach is more authoritative and more representative of Christianity simply because it's honest with the facts.

We both have been using "interpretation" to indicate a thematic framework, where conservatives would read the text as entailing certain historical-metaphysical propositions, and the liberal as entailing an imperative to promote inclusiveness and meditation on one's finitude etc. While both views can be supported by biblical reference, to say that either view is the proper interpretation of the whole text would be illegitimate, since both views arise (allegedly) by merely emphasizing certain portions of the text. There is no liberal "taking-into-account" the order to kill gays, which is unsurprising given that both the literal and thematic readings of the order to kill gays are morally unacceptable to the modern liberal. Thus the liberal doesn't even take such passages into consideration thematically. The claim that their interpretation is fully informed by the themes in the text is therefore made less credible. This disparity between liberal emphasis and the actual thematic content is fairly acute in the Old Testament, especially post-Babylon; entire books are filled with invective against such liberal ideals as racial equality/intermarriage, religious pluralism and acceptance of sexual deviance. These passages are ignored by liberals, apparently for no other reason than that they don't fit the liberal ideal.

These passages are ignored by liberals simply because ALL the passages are ignored by liberals. This is not a passage by passage religion. This is not an at the lines religion, but a between the lines religion. The book is a fiction. The liberal Christian is not accepting the eggs and foregoing the goose. There is no goose and no golden eggs. There is only the meaning that can be derived by exchanging literal for metaphor. God never drowned the world save a handful. You know that and I know that. The passage now drifts into obscurity or it is viewed as metaphor. If it is common metaphor, it is an invisible drop in a sea of metaphors that are created and recreated every day. But it is not a common metaphor---it expresses a timeless truth. Only the tiniest fraction of us are ideal human beings.

I agree that the liberal presentation of the Bible is less morally objectionable, since it deliberately excludes offensive themes and so on, but I don't see that it's a better interpretive framework overall, "better" being about interpretive virtues rather than morality. I'm not sure that there is a sensible unified interpretation of the Bible anyway given its diversity; there is only what we prefer to emphasize or ignore.

And for the most part, I agree. I have not had any conversations with liberal Christians that have not included the fear that our bias might create our religion. There is a recognition of that. But with Historical/Critical scholarship as a foundation and a belief that the highest human ideals (a search for timeless truths) best express God AND a deep seated respect for the position that Progressive Christianity might have in the hands of future historians---the foundations are certainly stronger than piece-meal selecting proof texts from fiction. Evangelical Christians are looking in the direction of their grandparents. Progressive Christians are looking in the direction of their grandchildren.

Scripture must be viewed with a non-biased eye and we must honestly desire to understand the scripture.

Ceastman is wrong and you are correct. There are no unbiased eyes. Culture is invisible and cultural bias is almost impossible to shed. More than that, there is no God. How are we to determine Gods will, if there is no God? But the Bible might indeed from time to time express a closeness to the human ideal that is unique and original. This expression has endured for three thousand years and it has emancipated millions of people. As metaphor, the Exodus is a present day reality---it is not just another manipulation of the text.