The Red Sea
| redsea.txt |
~ Chapter 9. The Red Sea ~
excerpt from
The Sins of Jesus
a novel
copyright 1999
Richard A. Muller
On the plateau the air was almost too hot to breathe. The lizards and snakes
were in retreat under the rocks-only men challenged the merciless sun. Like the
other slaves, I wore wrapped around my head a goat-hair cloth that served as a
mask, in the manner of the Bedouins, to protect my eyes from the knife-like
glare. Camels were in constant motion bringing water to the flat area where we
worked, but there was never enough.
Our work on the aqueduct progressed rapidly. The channel almost reached to
the edge of the plateau, where it would join with the many-arched bridge that
crossed the chasm. How odd, I mused, that we build a bridge not to cross water
but to carry it. I lifted my pickax above my head and swung it down smoothly,
crashing its iron head into the limestone. Just a year ago, I remembered, I was
tormented by blisters. But now my hands were as tough as the knees of the
camels. Simon worked near me, gathering the chipped rock to be hauled off in
wagons. He had arranged to have me assigned to the same work team as him. I
marveled at the influence he held over our owner, and I enjoyed the freedom, for
this group had the most lenient of taskmasters. Still, I worked hard and I liked
feeling my body grow stronger.
It was on this scorching day, as I stood stretching my back, that I glanced
into the distant desert and saw a shimmering on the horizon. I adjusted my mask
to see better. A wide blue lake glimmered in the otherwise dry landscape.
"Simon!" I shouted. "Water! Look!" I rubbed my eyes in amazement. "That must
be the Great Sea of the Setting Sun!"
"That's not the Great Sea, Jesus," he said with a wry smile. "It's the Red
Sea."
Simon was jesting, but I didn't understand the joke. "The Red Sea is over a
hundred miles away, Simon. It must be the Great Sea. But ... how could we see it
from here?"
"Jesus, you told me that you traveled to Egypt as a child. Have you never
seen Satan's water?"
"Oh. Yes, of course. Satan's water." To recover my dignity, I just recited
what my father had taught: "Satan's water is just an illusion, a reflection of
the sky on the ground, made when heat makes it reflect like metal. It has
nothing to do with Satan. People just call it that because you can never reach
it."
"Persians call it 'desert silver.' To me it is one of the great beauties and
mysteries of the desert." He stopped work for a moment to watch the shimmering.
I worked for a while and pondered my confusion. "Why did you say that it was
the Red Sea?" I finally asked.
The magus turned his strange blue eyes towards me. "Jesus," he said, "what do
you think would happen if we walked right into that water?"
"We'd never reach it. As we walked, it would get further and further away."
"But suppose that we were entering a large desert and we saw this large sea
in front of us. What would we see as we crossed the desert? What would the water
do? Where would it appear?"
I looked at the shimmer and imagined us walking across the hot sand and rock.
"I guess it would be on all sides of us," I answered.
"Exactly right! Think about that. Imagine it. As we enter the desert, the
sea goes back as if driven by a wind, and the waters are divided, and you walk
into the midst of what had been the sea but now is dry land. In the distance you
see a wall of water beyond your right hand, and a wall of water beyond your
left."
I knew the book of Exodus by heart, and the magus was quoting it nearly
verbatim. "Are you suggesting that Moses never split the Red Sea, but only split
an illusion?" I said, incredulously.
"Jesus, the Jews didn't have to cross the Red Sea, or any other large body of
water, to escape the Egyptians-only some marshes and the desert."
"But the Jews would have known about Satan's water!" I countered. "They
wouldn't have been fooled so easily." The idea was completely absurd. I was
annoyed and a bit indignant at this attack on my religion.
"You were fooled just now," he said, "and yet you knew about it. Of course
Moses knew about Satan's water. He had crossed the desert many times. But few of
the Jews had ever left Rameses. They lived along the lush Nile-with the desert
two days' journey away. Virtually all of them were in the desert for the very
first time."
I was dumbfounded. This miracle of Moses was the greatest event in the
history of Judaism. It was the most spectacular of God's interventions to
protect his chosen people. It was the most wonderful demonstration of his
infinite power and his love for us. Even to suggest that it never happened, or
that it was only an illusion, was an insult to all Jews.
I looked out over the quivering horizon and thought, it doesn't even look
like a sea! Anyway, not if you look at it for a long time. Certainly a whole
people wouldn't be fooled. In the group there must have been other Jews familiar
with the desert. Simon is just trying to make me angry. His contention doesn't
even make logical sense.
I had been quiet for a few minutes and was annoyed with myself for not
quickly countering Simon's accusations. Finally I said, with an affected
sarcasm, "If it really were an illusion, then why did Moses say it was the Red
Sea? If he were caught in such a lie, he would have lost his leadership for
good."
"He probably never told the Jews any such thing. They just saw that they were
heading towards a large body of water. The largest sea in the desert is the Red
Sea, so they assumed that Moses was leading them into it. They were probably
mystified, and they were certainly frightened. They believed that the Pharaoh's
army was in angry pursuit and that they were in danger of being slaughtered. It
was going to take a miracle to save them. Just then the sea split right in front
of them. A miracle had occurred! They assumed that Moses knew all along that the
sea would split. And that's the way the storytellers passed the story down."
"Well, then what caused the pursuing Egyptian soldiers to drown?" I asked
indignantly.
"Who says that they drowned, Jesus? Only the storyteller. The Jews never went
back. All they really knew was that the water closed behind them. The Egyptian
papyri chronicle that same period with no mention of a drowned army. So why
didn't the soldiers pursue the Jews? -- you are about to ask. I don't know.
Perhaps they thought that the Jews would eventually turn around and come back to
Egypt. It's not easy to survive on the desert, particularly for such a big
group. Rulers have always underestimated the toughness of your people, Jesus."
I swung my pick with added energy, sending tiny chips of rock shooting out in
all directions. But my mind was not on my work. I couldn't accept the magus's
sacrilegious interpretation of Exodus. I recited to myself the relevant sections
of the Scriptures, silently, trying to find the flaw. The magus worked quietly,
sweeping up chips with a bush broom. Suddenly I turned to him and said, "You're
telling me that Moses used magic to keep the loyalty of the Jews?"
"As I told you before, Jesus, there isn't a religion in history that hasn't
used magic for that purpose, although most of them deny doing so. Your people
are unusual-they've used magic less than most-but they used it when needed. Your
Scriptures are full of examples." He seemed to be thinking with his broom.
"Here, how about this. When God first spoke to him, Moses was not sure that he
could convince the Jews that he carried the divine word. Now, why was that?"
"Because he wasn't eloquent," I replied. "He said 'I am slow of speech and
slow of tongue.'"
"Then how did Moses convince the Jews that he had spoken directly to God?"
"God gave him two miracles to perform, the diseased hand that could be cured
by placing it under his cloak, and the walking stick that turned into a snake."
"Why didn't God simply make Moses eloquent? Certainly it was within the power
of the Almighty to do that."
I had no good answer.
"Tell me," he continued, "when Moses did these miracles, why didn't Pharaoh
believe he was a messenger from God?"
"Because his own magicians could ... perform the same magic," I said.
"Why didn't God give Moses a better miracle? Like making him eloquent?"
"Perhaps he wanted the Jews to be convinced, but not the Pharaoh."
"You're too clever for your own good!" the magus remonstrated with a laugh.
"You're beginning to sound like a Pharisee. Try to be smart, not clever."
"All right, why do you think the Lord gave Moses such little miracles, then?"
"Jesus, God didn't give these tricks to Moses. Moses learned them from the
Egyptians, perhaps in the Pharaoh's court. Moses used them to keep his own
people under control. Of course the tricks were useless in front of Pharaoh, for
Pharaoh's magicians were just as good, and probably better."
"Well, then, let me see you turn that broom into a snake," I said ruefully.
"I could do it, Jesus. But it would take a little preparation."
I stared off at the shimmering in the distance. It really does look like a
sea, I thought. I walked over to a day tent and took a drink of tepid water from
a goatskin. If it weren't so oppressively hot, I thought, I would have the
answers for the magus's accusations. He was a smart man who had studied Judaism,
but he didn't really understand our religion. He was just trying to demolish my
beliefs. What would my father say? How would he answer the magus? I pondered,
and an image came to my mind, of my father nodding, agreeing with the magus
about Moses. I pushed the image away. Not only was the magus toying with me, but
so was my mind.
For days I could think of nothing other than these accusations of the magus,
and I am sure my work suffered. Darius probably thought I was sick. Indeed, my
head did feel as if it were swimming, perhaps drowning, as I struggled to find
good. As I worked, I pondered the other miracles of Moses. Obviously Pharaoh
didn't believe the plagues had been brought by Moses. Indeed, his own magicians
said they could duplicate the deluge of frogs and the turning of water into
blood. Aha! The killing of the first-born! Moses couldn't have done that by
deception. The Jews used the sprig of a hyssop to paint lambs' blood on their
thresholds, so the Angel of Death would recognize Jewish homes and pass over
them. That midnight the first-born sons of all the Egyptians died. We still
celebrate the "pass-over." I'll challenge the magus with that.
No sooner had I imagined myself confronting Simon Magus with the slaughter of
the first-born, than I imagined his answer: "The Jews left that night. How did
they know that all the Egyptian first-born had died? They didn't even have time
to leaven their bread!"
My imagination offered no reply, so I pondered other miracles. What about
manna, the wondrous food that God supplied in the desert? What about that, Simon
Magus? And in my mind he replied, "What do you think the Jews knew about the
natural foods of the wilderness?" And I replied, nothing. Anything edible they
found would be considered a miracle.
Why was my mind tricking me so?
The one, the great indisputable miracle of Moses had been the splitting of
the sea. Everything else could be explained away, particularly if Moses had some
skill in magic. The most spectacular thing he had done, the thing that proved
his direct contact with the Lord, had been the parting of the Red Sea. It was
the only miracle defying explanation that had been performed in the presence of
all the Jews. And now Simon Magus had explained it.
No! Moses was not a fraud.
Over the next few days, we finished the digging of the channel on the plateau
and then began lining cracks with mortar. Work often came to a complete halt
when we ran out of water, and we waited in the day tent. I didn't raise the
issue of Moses with Simon during those times, and he didn't mention it to me,
but I grew more and more annoyed at my failure to confront him. One day I
stepped outside into the hot, fresh air. Simon followed me out.
"The desert is dead," he said, "but beautiful. It's a gift from God. We can
show our appreciation by enjoying it."
I was annoyed by the similarity of his words to those my father once spoke. I
blurted out, "Moses was not a liar or a fraud. He was our first prophet! He
delivered the covenant from the Lord."
"I agree," Simon said. "He was not a liar or fraud."
"But you said he lied to the Jews."
"No, not exactly. I said that Moses used magic to convince the Jews that he
brought the word of God."
"Now you are just being clever," I remonstrated. "What about the Law? Did it
come from a burning bush? Or were the rules made up by Moses? Moses said they
came from the Lord."
"Jesus, God speaks in many ways. Perhaps the Law had come to Moses from God,
from a voice whispering quietly in his ear."
"Moses said that it was a thunderous voice, not a quiet whisper!"
"Even a quiet whisper can carry a thunderous message." Simon lowered his
voice to a whisper. "Moses's greatness is beyond dispute, regardless of whether
or not he split the Red Sea. However, even with divinely inspired laws, you
sometimes need a little more to convince your people that God has spoken to you.
That's why the Greeks use magic. That's why the Egyptians use magic. That's why
we magi use magic."
"That's deception."
"If done in a righteous cause, deception can be more honest than truth."
END OF EXCERPT
If you would like to read more, or order a paperback copy of the entire novel,
visit www.richardmuller.com
excerpt from
The Sins of Jesus
a novel
copyright 1999
Richard A. Muller
On the plateau the air was almost too hot to breathe. The lizards and snakes
were in retreat under the rocks-only men challenged the merciless sun. Like the
other slaves, I wore wrapped around my head a goat-hair cloth that served as a
mask, in the manner of the Bedouins, to protect my eyes from the knife-like
glare. Camels were in constant motion bringing water to the flat area where we
worked, but there was never enough.
Our work on the aqueduct progressed rapidly. The channel almost reached to
the edge of the plateau, where it would join with the many-arched bridge that
crossed the chasm. How odd, I mused, that we build a bridge not to cross water
but to carry it. I lifted my pickax above my head and swung it down smoothly,
crashing its iron head into the limestone. Just a year ago, I remembered, I was
tormented by blisters. But now my hands were as tough as the knees of the
camels. Simon worked near me, gathering the chipped rock to be hauled off in
wagons. He had arranged to have me assigned to the same work team as him. I
marveled at the influence he held over our owner, and I enjoyed the freedom, for
this group had the most lenient of taskmasters. Still, I worked hard and I liked
feeling my body grow stronger.
It was on this scorching day, as I stood stretching my back, that I glanced
into the distant desert and saw a shimmering on the horizon. I adjusted my mask
to see better. A wide blue lake glimmered in the otherwise dry landscape.
"Simon!" I shouted. "Water! Look!" I rubbed my eyes in amazement. "That must
be the Great Sea of the Setting Sun!"
"That's not the Great Sea, Jesus," he said with a wry smile. "It's the Red
Sea."
Simon was jesting, but I didn't understand the joke. "The Red Sea is over a
hundred miles away, Simon. It must be the Great Sea. But ... how could we see it
from here?"
"Jesus, you told me that you traveled to Egypt as a child. Have you never
seen Satan's water?"
"Oh. Yes, of course. Satan's water." To recover my dignity, I just recited
what my father had taught: "Satan's water is just an illusion, a reflection of
the sky on the ground, made when heat makes it reflect like metal. It has
nothing to do with Satan. People just call it that because you can never reach
it."
"Persians call it 'desert silver.' To me it is one of the great beauties and
mysteries of the desert." He stopped work for a moment to watch the shimmering.
I worked for a while and pondered my confusion. "Why did you say that it was
the Red Sea?" I finally asked.
The magus turned his strange blue eyes towards me. "Jesus," he said, "what do
you think would happen if we walked right into that water?"
"We'd never reach it. As we walked, it would get further and further away."
"But suppose that we were entering a large desert and we saw this large sea
in front of us. What would we see as we crossed the desert? What would the water
do? Where would it appear?"
I looked at the shimmer and imagined us walking across the hot sand and rock.
"I guess it would be on all sides of us," I answered.
"Exactly right! Think about that. Imagine it. As we enter the desert, the
sea goes back as if driven by a wind, and the waters are divided, and you walk
into the midst of what had been the sea but now is dry land. In the distance you
see a wall of water beyond your right hand, and a wall of water beyond your
left."
I knew the book of Exodus by heart, and the magus was quoting it nearly
verbatim. "Are you suggesting that Moses never split the Red Sea, but only split
an illusion?" I said, incredulously.
"Jesus, the Jews didn't have to cross the Red Sea, or any other large body of
water, to escape the Egyptians-only some marshes and the desert."
"But the Jews would have known about Satan's water!" I countered. "They
wouldn't have been fooled so easily." The idea was completely absurd. I was
annoyed and a bit indignant at this attack on my religion.
"You were fooled just now," he said, "and yet you knew about it. Of course
Moses knew about Satan's water. He had crossed the desert many times. But few of
the Jews had ever left Rameses. They lived along the lush Nile-with the desert
two days' journey away. Virtually all of them were in the desert for the very
first time."
I was dumbfounded. This miracle of Moses was the greatest event in the
history of Judaism. It was the most spectacular of God's interventions to
protect his chosen people. It was the most wonderful demonstration of his
infinite power and his love for us. Even to suggest that it never happened, or
that it was only an illusion, was an insult to all Jews.
I looked out over the quivering horizon and thought, it doesn't even look
like a sea! Anyway, not if you look at it for a long time. Certainly a whole
people wouldn't be fooled. In the group there must have been other Jews familiar
with the desert. Simon is just trying to make me angry. His contention doesn't
even make logical sense.
I had been quiet for a few minutes and was annoyed with myself for not
quickly countering Simon's accusations. Finally I said, with an affected
sarcasm, "If it really were an illusion, then why did Moses say it was the Red
Sea? If he were caught in such a lie, he would have lost his leadership for
good."
"He probably never told the Jews any such thing. They just saw that they were
heading towards a large body of water. The largest sea in the desert is the Red
Sea, so they assumed that Moses was leading them into it. They were probably
mystified, and they were certainly frightened. They believed that the Pharaoh's
army was in angry pursuit and that they were in danger of being slaughtered. It
was going to take a miracle to save them. Just then the sea split right in front
of them. A miracle had occurred! They assumed that Moses knew all along that the
sea would split. And that's the way the storytellers passed the story down."
"Well, then what caused the pursuing Egyptian soldiers to drown?" I asked
indignantly.
"Who says that they drowned, Jesus? Only the storyteller. The Jews never went
back. All they really knew was that the water closed behind them. The Egyptian
papyri chronicle that same period with no mention of a drowned army. So why
didn't the soldiers pursue the Jews? -- you are about to ask. I don't know.
Perhaps they thought that the Jews would eventually turn around and come back to
Egypt. It's not easy to survive on the desert, particularly for such a big
group. Rulers have always underestimated the toughness of your people, Jesus."
I swung my pick with added energy, sending tiny chips of rock shooting out in
all directions. But my mind was not on my work. I couldn't accept the magus's
sacrilegious interpretation of Exodus. I recited to myself the relevant sections
of the Scriptures, silently, trying to find the flaw. The magus worked quietly,
sweeping up chips with a bush broom. Suddenly I turned to him and said, "You're
telling me that Moses used magic to keep the loyalty of the Jews?"
"As I told you before, Jesus, there isn't a religion in history that hasn't
used magic for that purpose, although most of them deny doing so. Your people
are unusual-they've used magic less than most-but they used it when needed. Your
Scriptures are full of examples." He seemed to be thinking with his broom.
"Here, how about this. When God first spoke to him, Moses was not sure that he
could convince the Jews that he carried the divine word. Now, why was that?"
"Because he wasn't eloquent," I replied. "He said 'I am slow of speech and
slow of tongue.'"
"Then how did Moses convince the Jews that he had spoken directly to God?"
"God gave him two miracles to perform, the diseased hand that could be cured
by placing it under his cloak, and the walking stick that turned into a snake."
"Why didn't God simply make Moses eloquent? Certainly it was within the power
of the Almighty to do that."
I had no good answer.
"Tell me," he continued, "when Moses did these miracles, why didn't Pharaoh
believe he was a messenger from God?"
"Because his own magicians could ... perform the same magic," I said.
"Why didn't God give Moses a better miracle? Like making him eloquent?"
"Perhaps he wanted the Jews to be convinced, but not the Pharaoh."
"You're too clever for your own good!" the magus remonstrated with a laugh.
"You're beginning to sound like a Pharisee. Try to be smart, not clever."
"All right, why do you think the Lord gave Moses such little miracles, then?"
"Jesus, God didn't give these tricks to Moses. Moses learned them from the
Egyptians, perhaps in the Pharaoh's court. Moses used them to keep his own
people under control. Of course the tricks were useless in front of Pharaoh, for
Pharaoh's magicians were just as good, and probably better."
"Well, then, let me see you turn that broom into a snake," I said ruefully.
"I could do it, Jesus. But it would take a little preparation."
I stared off at the shimmering in the distance. It really does look like a
sea, I thought. I walked over to a day tent and took a drink of tepid water from
a goatskin. If it weren't so oppressively hot, I thought, I would have the
answers for the magus's accusations. He was a smart man who had studied Judaism,
but he didn't really understand our religion. He was just trying to demolish my
beliefs. What would my father say? How would he answer the magus? I pondered,
and an image came to my mind, of my father nodding, agreeing with the magus
about Moses. I pushed the image away. Not only was the magus toying with me, but
so was my mind.
For days I could think of nothing other than these accusations of the magus,
and I am sure my work suffered. Darius probably thought I was sick. Indeed, my
head did feel as if it were swimming, perhaps drowning, as I struggled to find
good. As I worked, I pondered the other miracles of Moses. Obviously Pharaoh
didn't believe the plagues had been brought by Moses. Indeed, his own magicians
said they could duplicate the deluge of frogs and the turning of water into
blood. Aha! The killing of the first-born! Moses couldn't have done that by
deception. The Jews used the sprig of a hyssop to paint lambs' blood on their
thresholds, so the Angel of Death would recognize Jewish homes and pass over
them. That midnight the first-born sons of all the Egyptians died. We still
celebrate the "pass-over." I'll challenge the magus with that.
No sooner had I imagined myself confronting Simon Magus with the slaughter of
the first-born, than I imagined his answer: "The Jews left that night. How did
they know that all the Egyptian first-born had died? They didn't even have time
to leaven their bread!"
My imagination offered no reply, so I pondered other miracles. What about
manna, the wondrous food that God supplied in the desert? What about that, Simon
Magus? And in my mind he replied, "What do you think the Jews knew about the
natural foods of the wilderness?" And I replied, nothing. Anything edible they
found would be considered a miracle.
Why was my mind tricking me so?
The one, the great indisputable miracle of Moses had been the splitting of
the sea. Everything else could be explained away, particularly if Moses had some
skill in magic. The most spectacular thing he had done, the thing that proved
his direct contact with the Lord, had been the parting of the Red Sea. It was
the only miracle defying explanation that had been performed in the presence of
all the Jews. And now Simon Magus had explained it.
No! Moses was not a fraud.
Over the next few days, we finished the digging of the channel on the plateau
and then began lining cracks with mortar. Work often came to a complete halt
when we ran out of water, and we waited in the day tent. I didn't raise the
issue of Moses with Simon during those times, and he didn't mention it to me,
but I grew more and more annoyed at my failure to confront him. One day I
stepped outside into the hot, fresh air. Simon followed me out.
"The desert is dead," he said, "but beautiful. It's a gift from God. We can
show our appreciation by enjoying it."
I was annoyed by the similarity of his words to those my father once spoke. I
blurted out, "Moses was not a liar or a fraud. He was our first prophet! He
delivered the covenant from the Lord."
"I agree," Simon said. "He was not a liar or fraud."
"But you said he lied to the Jews."
"No, not exactly. I said that Moses used magic to convince the Jews that he
brought the word of God."
"Now you are just being clever," I remonstrated. "What about the Law? Did it
come from a burning bush? Or were the rules made up by Moses? Moses said they
came from the Lord."
"Jesus, God speaks in many ways. Perhaps the Law had come to Moses from God,
from a voice whispering quietly in his ear."
"Moses said that it was a thunderous voice, not a quiet whisper!"
"Even a quiet whisper can carry a thunderous message." Simon lowered his
voice to a whisper. "Moses's greatness is beyond dispute, regardless of whether
or not he split the Red Sea. However, even with divinely inspired laws, you
sometimes need a little more to convince your people that God has spoken to you.
That's why the Greeks use magic. That's why the Egyptians use magic. That's why
we magi use magic."
"That's deception."
"If done in a righteous cause, deception can be more honest than truth."
END OF EXCERPT
If you would like to read more, or order a paperback copy of the entire novel,
visit www.richardmuller.com