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April 18, 2008
Scientific look at the Haggadah
There are many nonspiritual rationales for Jewish historic stories and religious customs.
EUGENE KAELLIS
As the saying goes, "You can't believe everything you read." Going beyond the literal interpretation of Scripture allows respect for the Torah and other sacred texts as embodiments of the spiritual outlook of our ancestors, without the abandonment or derision of their historiography. The Passover story in particular calls for such an approach because it is the source of many traditions, but its evident ethnocentricity and its exaggerations are typical biblical distortions.
While the story of Pharaoh ordering the death of newborn Hebrew boys can be accepted literally, because the Hebrew population was growing rapidly, it seems more likely that Moses (unquestionably an Egyptian name) was an out-of-wedlock child, conveniently "found" among the rushes by his mother, one of Pharaoh's daughters, and raised in the royal household as a prince.
Leading a highly privileged life, Moses nonetheless felt strong sympathies for the Hebrew slaves, similar to those of young Americans, many from comfortable middle-class backgrounds, who engaged in the civil rights struggles in the United States, sometimes risking and losing their lives. Moses, in righteous anger, kills a foreman who was beating a Hebrew slave and flees to Midyan, where he marries Zepporah, the daughter of Jethro, a priest, who teaches him much useful desert lore.
As part of the calling for Moses to return to Egypt, God addresses him from a burning bush that does not consume itself, possibly Dictamnus fraxinella, or "gas plant," a plant that exudes a resin which may ignite in the heat of the desert sun without harming the bush itself.
Moses' being "slow of speech" may refer to a speech impairment or to his having forgotten Egyptian and, if he ever knew it, Hebrew, so Aaron serves as his "mouthpiece."
Of the 10 plagues, the Nile turns red, perhaps because of the occasional bloom of a red pigmented alga, protosiphonacea, which flourishes in warm, shallow bank-side pools that flow into the river when it rises. Tadpoles thrive on algae and their metamorphosis into frogs, a critical period in which many usually die from undernourishment, could have given rise to a frog population too large to be sustained. Since most die, their rotting bodies become convenient sites for the depositing of insect eggs, so the result could be a huge infestation of flies, carrying a common pathogenic microbe, staphylococcus aureus, causing widespread boils and infecting cattle. As well, hail and locust swarms are naturally occurring phenomena, as could be the three days of darkness, the result of airborne ash from a nearby explosion of the same active volcano that later guided the Hebrews with a pillar of smoke and fire (Exodus 13:21-22).
After each of the first nine plagues, Moses, taking advantage of these natural catastrophes, tries to convince Pharaoh that the ruler had incurred God's wrath because he enslaved the Hebrews. Yet, every time Pharaoh agrees to free the Hebrews, he goes back on his word.
Exodus 1:8 refers to "a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph," a reference to the return to the pharaoh's throne of an Egyptian, after the expulsion of the Hyksos, a Semitic and monotheistic people who, coming from the north, had previously conquered Egypt. The highly privileged Egyptian priestly class, fearing a resumption of Hyksos-inspired monotheism and with the experience of the short-lived monotheism of Pharaoh Ikhnaton (Amenhotep IV), regarded the Hebrews as religious subversives and wanted them expelled. However, the generals feared that the freed Hebrews would ally themselves with Egypt's rivals to the north, providing, if not great numbers, useful intelligence in an attack on Egypt. Building contractors opposed freeing the Hebrews because they wanted slave labor. Pharaoh's repeated reneging could be attributed to these factional differences at court and his own indecisiveness.
The last plague, death of the firstborn, did not rely on natural occurrences. A reasonable explanation is terror. To avoid the death of Hebrew children, their parents were alerted to paint their doorways with lamb's blood. With Moses' youthful knowledge of palace security and layout, and possible assistance from bribed collaborators, the Hebrews carried out their task, killing the firstborn of Pharaoh and those of important courtiers.
This terror is not comparable to Jihadist violence, as the Hebrews' only objective was freedom, not the destruction and certainly not the conversion of the Egyptians. Their action can be compared to the Roman slave revolts, most notably under Spartacus, and the pre-Civil War slave revolts in America's southern states which, though bloody and indiscriminate, were acts of desperation for a justifiable cause when no other course seemed available.
The Hebrews' crossing of the Reed sea (not Red Sea, which is an acknowledged transcription error) was probably over one of the several Nile branches of the delta, very close to the concentration of Hebrews in Goshen. The "reeds" were almost certainly papyrus, a fresh water plant. The mud flats could have supported the weight of those fleeing, but not that of Pharaoh's chariots and horses. The possible movement of water south, caused by an unusually strong, nearly constant north wind still characteristic of Egypt, may have assisted the Hebrews, and the wind's decline afterward may have contributed to a rise in water level, adding to the bogging down of the heavy chariots and possibly the drowning some Egyptians.
The eating of unleavened bread probably had little to do with haste. Leavened dough rises very quickly, especially in a warm environment. Instead, it was likely the first of a long list of avoidance ordinances directed against practices of Egyptian and other pagan cultures in the area. Egyptians invented leavened bread and beer. Indeed, so delighted were they with leavened bread, they created and worshipped oven gods. Jewish housewives used to throw a small portion of dough into the oven as a "sin offering" before baking challah, the Sabbath loaf, a gesture "pardoning" their use of a practice of their former enslavers.
Similarly, the eating of pork and the mixing dairy and meat likely were banned because they were parts of various (Baalistic) Dionysian rites. Indeed, many of the mandated Jewish practices – dietary, tonsorial and even (as Maimonides pointed out) prohibiting the mixing of certain fibres – distinguished the Hebrews from surrounding people, primarily the Egyptians.
The desert lore Moses learned from Jethro helped the Hebrews survive. Quails are easily captured as they rest on the ground after long migratory flights. Manna was probably an edible and nourishing fungus (perhaps mushrooms) or the secretion of insects (something like honey). Sweetening bitter water, i.e., removing dissolved salts, using a plant is evidently an ion-exchange phenomenon, which is used today in, for example, the household Brita system. Desert dwellers, like those who live in the Kalahari in Namibia, still use porous rocks to filter water.
It is evident from history that when a people revolt, they eagerly discard cultural habits attributed to their former masters and substitute others. Passover recalls a time when, in desperation, Jews escaped from their exploiters, who were attempting to reduce them, with the only weapons Jews still possessed – their determination and faith, coupled with an ambivalent court policy and Moses' unusual power of persuasion.
Eugene Kaellis is a freelance writer and retired academic from New Westminster.
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