FATHER FRANK’S RANTS Rant Number 615 6 January 2015 EXODUS: GODS AND MEN

RIDLEY SCOTT'S FILM, EXODUS, ATTEMPTS TO ELIMINATE GOD FROM THE BIBLICAL NARRATIVE: IT ALMOST SUCCEEDS.
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Banning Ridley Scott’s movie Exodus from Egypt an angry minister said that ‘Moses and the Jews did not build the pyramids’. He is right. Indeed, the Bible says nothing of pyramids. Only over a thousand years later the historian Flavius Josephus in his Antiquities of the Jews version of the Exodus brought in the pyramids. Naturally, Josephus was a Jew.

There is a story about someone telling a French woman that he had invented a new-fangled religion – ‘a religion without God’. ‘A religion without God?’ the horrified lady exclaimed: ‘Mon Dieu, quelle religion!’ Watching this film I felt a bit like that woman. Ridley Scott has almost succeeded in hoovering God out of Biblical account of Moses’ mighty deeds. Take the key episode of the Ten Commandments. Chapter 31 of the Book of Exodus states that God gave Moses the two tables of the testimony, tables of stone, ‘written with the finger of God’. Scott has Christian Bale’s Moses inscribing the tables with his own chisel, at the inspiration of a soppy pre-pubescent boy, presumably standing for the voice of his own conscience. I rest my case.

To accommodate this dubious Moses to present Western mores, Exodus emphasises his love affair, marriage and family life with the (Arab?) shepherdess Zipporah. But monogamy is a European custom, quite alien to the Bible. Two additional spouses of Moses are recorded in Scripture, an Ethiopian and a Kenite. And the vigorous Patriarch might have had others, plus of course many concubines. Perfectly normal and acceptable practice for a butch Semite prince, surely.

‘Go down Moses’ the Black American spiritual has it. Based on Exodus 8: ‘Thus says the Lord, ‘Let my people go’. No one spoke that with more ham passion than Charlton Heston’s Moses in Cecil B. DeMille’s 1956 epic The Ten Commandments. Undeniably, this is a ringing theme of protest against slavery. The modern Liberation Theology movement adopted the Exodus narrative as an emblem of deliverance from oppression and injustice. Alas, it neglected to include the next stage in the sacred tale: the arrival of the Israelites in Canaan and the horrific wars of subjugation and extermination of the native inhabitants led by Moses’ chief aide, Joshua. Besides, the Hebrews never gave up owning their own slaves.

Tellingly, you will not find in this movie the crucial incident in Exodus 32 of the adoration of the Golden Calf. It is about the apostasy of the Hebrew people in the desert, while Moses was absent on the holy mountain, receiving the stone tables from God. Hankering after the fleshpots of Egypt, the Hebrews forced Aaron, Moses’ brother, to build them an idol, a calf made of gold. So the people corrupted themselves and worshipped the molten calf. The wretched even celebrated with a wild party around the statue: ‘The people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play’. (Check out Poussin’s great painting in the London National Gallery for a vivid depiction of that terrible betrayal.) At God’s behest, then Moses put to the sword three thousands of those wretches. No wonder liberal Ridley Scott flinched at showing the dire consequences of challenging God.

That is not to say that this digitised Exodus is not reasonably entertaining. Joel Edgerton’ Pharaoh is good (but why is he often ruminating, as if gum-chewing? Never heard of that as an ancient Egyptian habit) and Christian Bale is a bearable Moses, though hardly fit to hold the candle to old Chuck Heston. The plagues of Egypt are portrayed with hideous effectiveness, although again a rationalistic, non-divine explanation is insinuated. (Ditto for the crossing of the Red Sea.) But you must feel sorry for the poor Egyptians, covered with sores and having their own first-born smitten by a dark shadow – the Angel of the Lord, presumably. ‘What kind of God kills children?’ demands the Pharaoh. Good question. Thank goodness in the New Testament God in Jesus Christ does not come to earth to strike human beings with horrible diseases and death but to bring healing, hope and love.

By the way, ancient Egyptian records have no mention of anything remotely resembling the Hebrews of the Exodus events. That is, apart from some passing references to bands of plague-bearers and sick slaves thrown out of Egypt by the authorities on grounds of public health. The relativity of truth, perhaps?

Several Arab countries have condemned Exodus, accusing it of Zionism. In Israel, I suspect, it will go down better, though not amongst the sternest Rabbis. (Culturally of course Moses was not Jewish but Egyptian – the Bible makes it clear – and Dr Freud in his Moses and Monotheism argued the same.) Well, you cannot portray the Old Testament lands without the Chosen People, any more than you can have England without that mighty island race, the English. But the priest feels that one minor figure in the movie holds out a prospect for peace. He is a boy – no, not the silly one playing the corny Mosaic inner voice but the winsome lad Gershom. Moses’ son from Zipporah. On the assumption that his mother is an Arab and his father a Jew, Gershom is the offspring of both and I like to think that he might stand for the future. A hint of a rapprochement to come between the two great nations?

Insh’allah!

Revd Frank Julian Gelli

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