Biblical Series: Exodus Episode 2: Man’s Relationship With the Divine (Slovak subtitles)

Thank you for joining us as we journey through the Great Book of Exodus and thank you very much to the DW plus crew for having the vision and generosity of spirit to make this Exodus seminar produced at no small cost and substantial risk freely available to all who are interested on YouTube perhaps you might consider a daily wire Plus subscription it's a Bastion of free speech we have great content there with Much more to come we journeyed to Athens Rome and Jerusalem to film a four-part documentary series on Western civilization and have additionally recorded specials

on marriage Vision the pitfalls and opportunities for adventure and masculinity all of which are exclusively available there these join many of the Beyond order public lectures that made up my recent tour and my extensive back catalog fully uncensored onward and [Music] upward [Music] hello everyone welcome to day two of The Exodus seminar hosted by daily wire plus um we're in Exodus chapter 3 today pretty much at the beginning of it I'll just briefly introduce everyone we have a new participant today uh M Mr Greg herwitz um an author and a man of many other talents

I'll let him introduce himself after I introduce all the people That perhaps you were familiar with from yesterday's episode or episode episode one uh Dr Douglas Hedley oos Guinness Dr James or Greg herwitz Dennis Prager Dr Steven Blackwood Jonathan Paso I'm Dr Jordan Peterson Greg welcome I'm glad you're here I'm looking forward to including you in the conversation and maybe you can say a few words about who you are and thank you for having me here I'm a I'm a novelist I write crime fiction I'm screenwriter also I write Comic books as well and I'm

very interested in narrative and how narrative moves through culture and particularly archetypes and studied a good deal of young um as well and so I've I've had the opportunity to cross with several of you in the past and I'm very happy to be engaging with you now those of you who I haven't yet so thanks for having me here yeah Greg's a great Storyteller and we've talked a lot about literature in the past he was a student Of mine way back when at Harvard one of the brightest students I had there and we've had a

very productive um post Harvard friendship over multiple decades and so I'm very happy that Greg's here and we're on E Exodus chapter 3 we just cracked it yesterday and I think I'll start right from the top um and Dr Blackwood had some comments about a part of the chapter um 33 that we rushed over lately or yesterday and but deserves some some more in-depth consideration Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father-in-law the the priest of Midian and he led the flock to the backside of the desert and came to the Mountain of God

even to Horeb and the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush now that's an that's an interesting passage and Dr Blackwood will elaborate on this the word phenomenon is linked is etymologically derived from the Greek word Fain is Thigh and that means to shine forth and that's uh uh concept worth considering because you'll note if you look at how you attend to the world that some things attract your attention they beckon to you sometimes that's because you can voluntarily find things meaningful so you're

imposing a structure on the world but sometimes it's as if the world is calling to it's pulling your attention hither and yawn and and Dr Blackwood you had some interesting comments about what Happens with Moses next and Moses looked and behold the bush burned with fire and the Bush was not consumed and Moses said I will now turn aside so he deviates from his pathway and see this great sight why the bush is not burned well and it it goes on to say you know and when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see

I was just really as we were talking last night I was thinking about you know what are the conditions under which this Revelation happens and what Are the conditions under which it happens in our own life this opening up to the Transcendent and it seems to me there's something very important here in which you know Moses is is is attending to something and it's it's like Aristotle says philosophy begins in Wonder there's this uh very beautiful moment in which Moses turns aside from where he is to go and attend and that it's only because he's

open to the possibility of turning aside that he Sees the burning bush and the Revelation that is in that is able to unfold in his so he's in engaged in some sense in an instrumental activity right he's about his own business but he's open enough to what isn't within his framework of reference let's say to note when something is significant that calls to him and then humble enough to pay attention to it and that's where he encounters God right and that's that's definitely worth considering and so in That V just for a moment um I've

always wondered and I have no answer to this if I were a Shepherd I would see Burnie bushes regularly so it takes perhaps a Moses type which is building on what you've just been saying to say hey wait a minute it's not it's not being consumed the bush it's not burning there's a fire attentive I I think I think it does suggest that also could I just say this a sense you know when he says you know To take off your shoes because the ground which you're you're standing is Holy I mean there's this real

question of you know is everything Holy Ground I mean it's not the world that changes right it's our own perception of the world that changes and you know I would say there there is no moment in life that does isn't in itself actually holy it's a matter of coming to be open to or it to be revealed as holy in your life no There's no moment that isn't is that is cannot be redeemed or made epiphanic whether it's doing the dishes or you know doing the laundry or or or picking up the usual things of

of of any day or the usual toils and tribulations of normal life there's no moment that doesn't have in it the possibility of divine revelation and so it's if your shoes are off yes yes if you're have the spiritual let's say uh uh stance or Attunement to let that Discovery happen Yeah well that's part of what meditative practice is supposed to what in instill in you as a habit and there's something nourishing about that if it's practiced properly and that is the relief in some sense of being immersed in something that outside of you that's

beyond your conception there's a terror that's associated with that in principle like there might be Terror with a burning bush but it's also extremely uh salutary in the most fundamental sense so and Nourishing so and when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see and so that that speaks to your point too the Lord responds the high the thing that's put in the highest Place responds to Moses response to the call right and when the Lord saw that he turned to to see God called unto him out of the midst of the Bush and

said Moses Moses and Moses said here am I and he said God said draw not nigh hither put off thy shoes from off thy feet for the place Where on thou standest is Holy Ground moreover he said I am the god of thy father the god of Abraham the god of isaah and the god of Jacob and Moses hid his face for he was afraid to look upon God I read in Yung years ago this idea that I found extraordinarily compelling and useful which was that every ideal is simultaneously and necessarily a judge and so

you imagine that the ideal Is something that beckons to you but you're also you also pale in comparison to the ideal and so by apprehending an ideal you're also simultaneously judged and the higher the ideal the more intense the Judgment in some real sense I think that's partly why people are terrified of great art like Michelangelo's David I read a great commentary on that the commentator suggested that the statue calls upon you to be far more than you are so there's That judgment and I think part of what happens to Moses here is that he's

afraid to look upon God the god of Abraham that calls people to Adventure the god of Isaac the god of Jacob the god that calls people to Adventure and sacrifice and and then out of slavery as well is that ideal that's ultimately terrifying in some real sense and so Moses hides his face for he was afraid to look upon God their negotiation is interesting to me because God sort of Comes forth here and lists his Bona feeds right because he says I'm your God I'm the god of your people and so it's it's very interesting

the back and forth between him and Moses and so you know he it's sort of he he's almost proving the case that he's the god to be set before other gods by identifying him as the god of his people and certainly the god to be set be before other gods by Moses given his given his cultural heritage right so I'm not only God I'm not only This Transcendent figure that that you would assume might be behind the unconsumed burning bush but the more particularized God that's already been identified as part of this tradition right and

based on what Stephen was saying Moses's reaction to what to God's call is also one of attention you know he says here am I here I am that's all he can do he can just I'm I'm here and I'm paying attention to what is happening and this phrase is so Important that it's repeated in other places in the Bible you see it in the story of Samuel for example who has that same reaction he hears the call and all he can say is I am here and I am attending now and so so so it's

interesting to see that this this idea of attention continues on in the story well it's it's it's this idea of attention is extremely important important because it's easy to think of attention and cognition let's say or Even rationality as somehow equivalent but they're importantly different because rationality builds towers of Babel let's say and rationality makes presumptions about the world but attention is a precondition for Revelation and for rationality and attention in is in and of itself a kind of openness to the Horizon of transformation and the more I would say there's a direct connection between

being attentive and even being capable Of healing in some real sense so if you're a clinician one of the things you learned and Carl Rogers the cln was a particularly potent writer on this notion that attentive listening in and of itself has a Curative capacity you let people unfold in front of you you encourage them to unfold in front of you and that's not even analytic thought there can be a strategic component of it but mostly it's it's just the devotion of attention and attention also in some Real sense C sheds light on the darkness

because we only see what we attend to and what we don't see or what we don't perceive in the broadest sense is in some real sense not even there and so it's it's also attending like the roarian theory also it's attending at the level of the nervous system it's attending all the way down right having enough having sufficient um confidence in your own world view to be able to open up and attend and Embrace a Viewpoint that might be opposing and it's very interesting to me here that you know one of the things that seems

to be prevalent in as with the story of Adam and Eve is shame right shame is one of the precursors of this the first thing is that you hide your face and so the calling is to back and forth and they they this negotiation that continues is a drawing out and through shame in some regards cuz shame is the first thing I think to overcome About your an adequacies to hold your your strength of openness and the opposition of a of something that is revelatory or different to you it's a nervous system level engagement well

Rogers talked about this Con this concept he called congruence he believed that if you were going to enter into a therapeutic dialogos because Rogers was basically a Christian seminarian although he became an agnostic he was going to go practice as a missionary and So his thought is is absolutely saturated with Protestant liberal Christian presuppositions and he believed that in order to engage in a healing conversation so to actually be able to listen you had to be congruent and what he meant by that was that your your body and your emotions and your motivations and your

rationality and your utterances and the way that you cast your attention were genuinely integrated all the way down and I think Part of the yogic practice so when you practice yoga people don't know this generally but the postures the asanas those are more like dance moves than they are like the point of the exercise the the asanas are postures that you learn to adopt so that you can put your body in all sorts of different positions but once you master the asanas you're supposed to allow your body in some sense to move by itself so

you're trying to take out Kinks and pain and all of That to move by itself like you might when you're dancing to align yourself properly so you can attain that pose the cross-legged pose so you're in a pyramidal triangular position and you're a stack that's integrated all the way up through you through your physiological layers those would be the chakras so that that Revelation can come forth without being impaired by any internal discordance and it always ends in shabas which is the death po corpse pose right It ends with corpse pose you lie still and

you integrate and then you you arise again new Jordan could I put it slightly differently though I agree with everything said and you're talking about the extraordinary which we should see in the ordinary step's exactly right I agree with everything you said but here you have the immensity of something quite Beyond any normal experience so we got to Remember more than half of the world have a belief that comes from this chapter because this is different from Hinduism this is different from atheism this is different from every other religion you know and you know say

people like Rodney Stark monotheism properly understood as the single most powerful idea humans have ever had and I think we've got to keep the immensity of what's Happening Here all of you said is right but here it's elevated to ANC Incredible level right well that would be the mysterium tremendum of the suum Borum right I mean it's it's bad enough to encounter the good in one of its forms but to encounter even noto's idea you can apply to other religions and so on so what do you think specifically differentiates this well verse 14 which we're

coming to Amplified by say prophets like Isaiah you have a vision of God here there's nothing like it outside of the cosmos Outside of History outside of humanity this is something immensely difficult different and I think we got to recognize the radical uniqueness of it it's worth pointing out just on that point uh just to back up what o just said there's no hesitation at all uh over the significance of the burning bush the the bush is a vehicle for divine revelation uh what would have been much more common in the religious climate of his

time would be to treat The bush as some sort of expression form of divinity actual Divinity in and of itself not pointer to something absolutely just as the Egyptians would take as we'll see later the snake as as something Divine a naturalistic way of understanding Divinity that there's no there's no pause there at all it's immediately Moses is attuned to the Transcendent attuned to God speaking through an inanimate object or well an animate object but just a a piece of a Piece of nature there's no sense that he's trying to divinize or put sort of

ultimate significance in just in a bush as would have been very common and and has been very common and for the for the sort of across the vast W of the history of religious belief go ahead just the these two comments are why in the final analysis I I do believe that this is divine text I cannot think of a natural explanation For the Torah and the radical innovation of monotheism let alone ethical monotheism any more than I can think of a rational explanation for the creation of the universe or of the human being or

Consciousness I it just as the creation of of the universe to me argues for the Divine or for a Creator Capital C so does the the Torah and its radical new God argue to me for a creator of the text with a Capital C so Oz part of your point if I understand it correctly is That Moses turns to the burning bush which is a phenomenon that attracts his attention but then in some sense and this is to James Point too he sees through that uh anomalous event even though it's anomalous and Powerful in its

own right and then he sees something behind that that's the source of that anomalous and interesting event and then in some sense this extends to a vision that's beyond the cosmos itself right beyond the confines of time and space Itself to localize the Transcendent not in the natural world not in the phenomenal world but beyond all of that and so that's part of what makes it terrifying and profound simultaneously that well to press it one further I mean Steven's right he there's a tension but he wants to know why an explanation so that's the signal

of transcendence but when he turns not what he sees that's where I disagree With you it's what he hears and surely that's the significance you see right from you've got three Revelations of God first to Moses alone and then to all the Elders of Israel and then to the entire nation Deuteronomy 4 and it says you didn't see a form you only heard a voice and so it's always hearing Shamar so we don't see I now seeing is what is is the normal foresight Insight observation no the Hebrew he you think That's associated with the

emphasis on the word as a manifestation as a primary manifestation of God because nothing else can capture God he but we will see many sites I mean we'll have to deny the text at some point because even the description of these feet at the top of the mountain there are these these images when When God says you will see my backside there's many visual images that will continue all the way through the the book of Exodus yeah but there Always the like or whatever it's the feet you don't see the face and no one you

know any know I don't want to press that but the word always comes before the image right the way through we need to make sense of the end of verse six in that case that Moses is hiding his face for he was afraid to look upon God exactly I think there is a theophonic dimension here and it's suggested by the you know the the the burning bush um and indeed that language Of the the face um and the looking there's a beautiful late novel by CS Lewis called till we have faces um and it's all

about the vision of God and a dialectic of trying to understand yourself in terms of the Divine and it's also link to this this theme of shame that that you mentioned um the philosopher Max shiler argued that shame is in fact a very important part of human identity um so it's not just some sort Of strange aberration but in a way coming to understand ourselves is a process that quite naturally involves an element of of Shame and I wonder whether this element of Shame here in the face of transcendent goodness well he certainly recognizes himself

as lesser than God which is something right especially when you're comparing him to the pharaoh who would have at least in this narrative context exactly the opposite problem yeah but these AR I Don't think these are ultimately opposed the are they I mean if what's being revealed here is is as it were the ultimate order of being itself you know God is being revealed as that which is beyond nature uh but revealed through these signs that point to that Beyond the that which is beyond nature and this is where we'll see the great distinction between

the god of the Israelites and the god of the the Egyptians or the egyp as the Egyptians conceive of God is Totally bound within the natural so it's both Beyond on the one hand but signified in what is visual as Beyond but it is at the same time understood through the word by the way just that's another unique uh I'm sorry I will belabor this all week pleas it is another unique thing to the Torah to the first five books of the Bible that God is the creator of Nature and not in it okay that's

the significance of Genesis 1 more than any other significance there Are many significant things but that is a radical Innovation and we today in my opinion uh the postchristian or post judeo-christian world is not atheistic it's Pagan we are reverting to Nature worship yeah so that's the worship of Gaia for example the notion of the Earth itself is in some real sense a self-regulating deity to which we should be subordinate right and that too you shall rule over nature drives them crazy that That Genesis verse in a society rif with anti-religious ideologies it can be

incredibly challenging to ground oneself in what you know to be true and good to keep from descending into distrust you need to check out hallow the number one Prayer app in the world with over 10,000 Audi guided prayers and meditations that will give you the tools to combat the darkness and overcome with the light with hallow you can explore different Themes and types of prayer and meditation such as gratitude forgiveness and centering prayer you can also choose from different lengths of meditation to fit your schedule whether you have a few minutes or an hour with

its user-friendly interface and hundreds of guided meditations the Hallow app has quickly become a go-to resource for people seeking spiritual growth and healing download the app for free at ./ Exodus you can set reminders and track Your progress along the way so what are you waiting for download the Hallow app at hall.com Exodus that's hall.com Exodus hall.com Exodus for exclusive 3month free trial of all 10,000 plus prayers and meditations yeah well Jonathan you had an interesting comment at one point that I remember us talking about the idea that the um the command to man from

God was to subdue nature and your take on That you took apart the word subdue and you took it apart oh okay so how do so do you remember how the conversation you talked about the subduing of nature the point was to subdo Nature is not necessarily to dominate it or even to extract instrumental value out of it but to put everything in its proper place right to subdue it to arrange it in a in kind of cognitive hierarchy and perceptual hierarchy that you characterized as part Of this mountain-like structure and so the I think

the way to to for me to to understand it is that on the one hand there's a sense in which all things God is beyond all and that and that God is like you said outside let's say or above all things and then but there's also a manner in which to the extent that we are connected to God is the extent to which we actually exist right that is how we exist we exist to the extent that we are That is our source and so this is this idea of of of the hierarchy of beings

you could say which is the notion that nothing has self-existence and this is a this is what ultimately When God says his name and this is how many of the church fathers interpret it that nothing has self-existence except God God is the only one who self- exists everything else if once you think it self- exists then it ceases to exist it ceases to Have any value and it only has value to the extent in which it participates oh yeah so is that also the Tower of Babel problem because the Tower of Babel is suppos to

be independent it's not just the Tower of Babel it's the Adam taking the fruit it's like it's the idea of Pride itself which is that pride is always trying to close yourself off and say I've got this I am I am self- causing I am self-existence and as soon as you do that you devolve you die Because you're not you're embedded in in this hierarchy of being which is ultimately connected to the transcended source of all things and so the idea is all this discussion would be that all things reveal God to us to the

extent that they do but they never give us God completely they they are they are po pointers they are they are steps in Jacob's Ladder which lead us all the way into the Transcendent but the Transcendent always escapes always Always you know uh recedes in front of our peering eyes uh but that those two movements together I think are are very important at least at least in a in my Christian perception which is both the absolute Transcendence but then also the the grace of God which flows and which fills the world with his presence and

makes all of reality possibly a theophyl on the great as it were every Link in the great chain of being yeah and there is and it's not an arbitrary Thing it doesn't mean you know it's not that everything can just be holy in every way it is it it lays itself out in these in these beautiful powerful hierarchies and so there are images for example the image of a mountain or the man in which God will give the the pattern of the Tabernacle which is the most appropriate uh theophany it's the it's the way in

which you can have more hints to how God reveals himself in the world And so they and the laws are the same God is saying this is the way but the whole world is full of his glory right we we we believe that because or else how does the the world can't completely exist outside God either it doesn't have doesn't it's not like it's God and then the world has this autonomous existence it's that it's that God is beyond but that he he he he out outpour into reality that's so different from a modern way

of understanding God and Religion in terms of this sort of two-tier architecture of reality with nature and then supern nature and that sort of two-tier structure which emerges in early modernity probably a little bit before that uh is is a disaster for uh people trying to advance a strong case for the rationality of religious commitment because as it were supern nature immediately becomes the realm of the spooky stuff it also allows God to float off into space Sense yeah absolutely and to be separated from the World of Nature and therefore of scientific inquiry and so

it gets relegated becomes then easy for bertran Russell to say well belief in God is equivalent to belief in a Flying Spaghetti Monster or rotating teup when we have this notion of being right this I am that will be presented to us when we understand that being is not arbitrary being manifests itself to us in purposes in reasons and those reasons Become the place where God you know once you once you encounter the true reason of something you are having a little theophany you're having a a mini theophany and so so the idea that being

isn't just arbitrary just things that exist but rather it has this natural flow of purposes and meanings then all of a sudden this this this the the image that God gives of the I am it's like yeah he's the only he is the only one that self- subsists in all things in Their purposes Point towards that so um something complicated emerges out of that as if this isn't complicated enough it's there is this so one of yung's critiques of protestantism was that the critique of Catholicism is that it might fall prey to the authoritarianism that's

in some sense implicit in the roman-like structure of the church and the hierarchy that's there but his critique of protestantism the danger there was that everyone would become their own Church and then their identity would become self-proclaimed in some fundamental sense because with no mediating structures between the Divine and the person it's easy for the person in some sense to usurp the position of God and one of the things that's puzzled me about the recent insistence that people can self-define their own existence is that they're attributing to themselves in some real sense the omniscience omnipotence

and uh Omnipresence of God because their stance is something like I am that I am that's why it's Pride yeah right right right and and and I I really see those things as tightly linked it's one of the things that's tilted me I would say ethically in a more conservative Direction because even in the psychotherapeutic literature you see this rouso like underpinning which more or less assumes that sanity is part and parcel of the autonomous individual and So there's there's a ran element there there's a Protestant element and a classic liberal element and I fall

prayed that to some degree by thinking of the sovereign individual as the fundamental unit of of value and but then I and this is partly under the influence of p and and the theorists of play and the people whove made the case that identity comes out of negotiation that in order to be sane which is something other than let's say Self-actualized in the in the narrow sense you have to be positioned in these hierarchical structures so you can't be saying without a partner without a long-term partner let's say or if you don't have a long-term

partner you better have some children or some parents and if you don't have them you better have some friends and if you don't have them you better at least have some colleagues and a town and a city and a state and a country all the way up The hierarchy and that what the sanity then becomes is the symphony like ordering of that entire structure rather than the autonomous health of the autonomous psyche self-defined also Conjuring up the notion that all of that embeddedness is nothing but an imposition in the manifestation of your autonomous self which

is also something that rouso would tilt towards right but but Jordan that doesn't come from Protestantism that goes right back to the early Temptation you shall be as God now protestantism certainly reinforces one extreme you're right about that you think say H's famous description of Marx you are a Godless self God right right right because that's the alternative well that's a scary that's a very frightening thing if it's real and the lack of embedding is what is ripe for manipulation right cuz you move you can move this is what we're seeing with sort Of you

know mobike mentality throughout the culture across the spectrum because you can move people like a school of fish because they're not embedded in something and that's the te in the text that's what we saw at the beginning Pharaoh that's what Pharaoh wants to do Pharaoh wants to reduce the Israelites to potential so that he can then rule over them and manipulate them he doesn't want families he doesn't want all these embedded structures which create this Normal pyramid those are alternative sources of power and structure as well that would that would but they they don't have

to be comp they don't compete the idea that a family is a power structure or a structure of of communion doesn't compete with our relationship with God it actually becomes a place where it can happen and that's why the laws right when the God gives the laws they're all modes of communion they're not just a bunch of like rules or moral Rules they're me they're methods of being together and of of ultimately loving each other that's methodss of negotiation mhm so Pharaoh makes them slaves obviously and Hayak would say that's what modern collectivism does makes

us serves the road to serf them it's the same yeah absolutely although H solution the sort of ultra libertarian solution can lead to a kind of atomization of the individual and as Greg said atomized individuals are Easily controlled individuals right so and the and the Lord said I have surely seen the Affliction of my people which are in Egypt and so he's reemphasizing the notion that he's attending and also that he's the spirit that's responding to to their intrinsic and embodied desire to be free of slavery and have heard their Cry by reason of their

taskmasters for I know their sorrows all of that's a delineation of the notion that there's Something intrinsically and fundamentally unethical about the enslavement of the of the Israelites and I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians away from tyranny and to bring them out of that land unto a good land in a large unto a land flowing with milk and honey unto the place of the Canaanites and the Hittites and the amorites and the perizzites and the hivites and the Jebusites now therefore Behold The Cry of the children of

Israel is come unto me and I've also seen the oppression wherewith the Egyptians oppressed them okay so now we have the narrative structure of this text outlined here too and what you see is the the emphasis on the fact that the current tyranny is unsustainable and ethically undesirable and that it needs to be transcended and that the proper counterposition to that is the hypothetical land of milk and Honey and so that's well that's fat and sugar fundamentally and if you're a hungry people then that's definitely a vision of paradise but there's a there's an archetypal

structure to this because we're always moving away from uh an insufficient and tyrannical current state it's not in sync with the Horizon of the future and it's corrupted by our presuppositions and our sins in some sense and we're always moving to a better place and that's actually the Motive force in life and if you look at us neuropharmacologically and biologically what you see is that the systems that fill us with enthusiasm so that's the spirit of God in the eological sense are the same systems that Mark our progress towards a a uh destination of value

and so there's a direct concordance neurologically between the degree to which you're aiming up a steep Pinnacle your movement towards that upper aim and The degree to which you're filled with enthusiasm and positive emotion and that also regulates negative emotion suffering and anxiety and so you see this fundamental narrative the fundamental narrative substructure in some sense of perception reflected here Jordan with due respect you're making an archetypal again whereas this is historical and it refers to the Covenant with Abraham and the promise of land and that runs right through the Bible uh the promised land

and that's what's being referred to here right well then I would say that then to your point that would be a translation in some sense of this even more thinking biologically this would be a transposition of this fundamental biological Drive which is transhuman because it's not just human beings that have this gold directed orientation towards the future it goes way down the fentic chain but it's concretized here Into geography and territory does that seem like a reasonable mediation I have a question here to so what are the conditions in the text and and of Moses

in the situation they call for God's attendance to this it's not like God was not aware previously that the Israelites were enslaved so what are the narrative conditions that cause this right we talked a little bit about this yesterday about moses' character and Moses seems to be someone who's Particularly attuned to Injustice and suffering and so there's a call in some sense in Moses to to respond to this and it seems that that's part of what alerts God I think that the slaughter of the children is is uh is also that call like we see

we see in the in the story of Canan abble you see that pattern set itself up which is that the blood is calling from the earth you know that this Scandal is a is a call and so I think that that I think that the idea of The killing of the children is repeated um is as a repetition of already the canable story also the story Christ as well if tragic enough things happen to a community there automatically arises a compensatory desire which is if the lowest thing is happening then there's an immediate call for

the REM manifestation of the highest thing as a as a medicament but even behind the things you're talking about Genesis 15 the Lord predicts to Abraham they will Go into slavery and the whole point of Israel is to be the counter Egypt and after they're released they're never to treat other people the way they were treated there's a tempering too with Moses I was think thinking about your analysis of the meek shall inherit the earth right and and the the meaning of Meek that was always puzzling to me is those who have swords who keep

them sheathed so it's very interesting to me that Moses one of His first adult actions is to kill an Egyptian who beat somebody right it's like you he has to have use of the sword before having the power to know when to have achieved to affect transformational change so he's undergone a sort of moral tempering in some ways of Having excess to determine what's too far and what's the right amount that opens them up to a r moment that that definitely fills in a discussion we had yesterday about what Happened when Moses killed the Egyptian

because doesn't go so well for him right he and it it's because well in your analysis it's because he went too far it was necessary that he had that capacity but he went too far and he wasn't we talked yesterday are you saying he went too far I'm saying that that well he went too far and learned and was punished for it but you have to go too far to know what is too far so you do feel he went too Far I I I I I like what he did okay what I'm saying is

is that you have to go too you have to know how to use a sword in order to have it sheath to then bring transformational change and peace soldiers know best how awful war is and so he had to be a warrior first in order to no I was just curious because I it's it's a very uh certainly uh Christian commentary is often that he he he sinned in killing the Egyptian and I and I have never accepted that but but it but does It to be a sin to have killed the Egyptian not for

us to think that maybe Moses is not exactly a paragon of Courage here I mean he only he looks left and right makes sure no one's watching it's not exactly resistance of the regime and only then does he kill someone and then he he buries him to make sure no one would know that he did it and so it wouldn't have been gutsy to have done it publicly well I mean suicidal well one could debate that Question but what what I'm saying is that there's a moral principle at work surely but it's it's also let's

say um it's it's by no means fully worked out God hasn't manifested himself fully to Moses by that point either and so You' you was it your point because if it was I I I'm fascinated cuz you ask the great question why did God intervene when he did to which I have never had an answer and I don't know if there is an answer but it's a very very good question does The narrative you asked imply any reason for God's intervening then and not earlier did you suggest and if you didn't I'll happily take credit

for this I but if you did I have to give you the credit that in effect God was looking for the right person all this time well this T tou is and it's a very tricky issue because it it gets you into a conundrum when terrible things are happening to say Well they're happening in part because no one will stand up and Foro them but if you look at situations like the totalitarian States under the Communists it's certainly the case that people's willingness to not stand up even when they knew they should allowed those totalitarian

catastrophes to to mount and mount and mount and mount by the way was there was there a Soviet Moses I I can't think of s nson was expelled he was expelled though and and uh so but that's an interesting Well many of them were Ked so but anyway I just want to know is that is my that is your point well that's what it that's how I love it I I I'm crazy about it actually well it has to do does it answer that for you in some way I mean for me so I'm looking

at it from a straight narrative perspective of how you make a structure and a story make sense if we detach ourselves from from the spiritual world just for a moment and what it is is that there's Not there's not a hero who's worthy of how having the ability to to to encounter the Divine in a manner that can be transformational yes so Moses's tempering is the story of right he comes sort of from no one right he's he's raised in in in the way that he's raised and he also is is prone to a violent

outbreak that shows courage but it's a younger version of Courage it's untempered and so he pays his penants for that and is finally seasoned he's He's he's seasoned sufficiently in his suffering to be at a point he can take notice of what is revelatory and to engage with it in a manner that's transformational so then he's a he's a what do they call that a psychopomp he's someone who like a frog right he can mediate he can mediate oh my God don't tell me that that's the worst thing you can possibly be to exist on

that border and that would require something to come up from mankind so to speak and Something to come down from God simultaneously so there's some sort of meeting and then that becomes that person becomes a mediating figure that's right and that person's engagement in cultural moments or in the life like people can be psychop pumps for different people or for a culture well you think Dennis that seems to make sense if you think about it in terms of the prophetic tradition in in the Old Testament is that you get a societies That collapse in and

of themselves and and they're they turn from God so to speak and they continue to turn from God and things just get worse and worse and worse and more tyrannical until someone pops up and is now willing to take the this this wonderful explanation uh suggests that the old saw God will act if we do right he won't he won't he won't act so entirely on his own no no well and that We have to prompt his action that would also interfere in some sense with our Free Will and it also makes sense dov's strange

comment that beauty would would save the world CU you you could imagine in some sense that what that what Moses is having here when he encounters the burning bush is something like an aesthetic experience right it's profoundly attractive at least perhaps it's not beautiful but perhaps it is and so that beauty is calling to him and Calls him into a relationship that then transforms itself into something Transcendent but he's also prepared for that character logically well what like to Oz's point so I don't know if you covered this yesterday but there's so many parallels in

the story of Moses and the story of creation and the building of the T the Tabernacle also right there's it's it's embedded in the story of Genesis and what's very interesting to me is that if you just if Exodus was The first book we could say well if God speaks and there's no one to hear him does he really exist if God is appears but Genesis predates it so this is a story to say is you're saying that God is outside of right God is outside that's the revelatory thing that's why Genesis is first and

then there's a parallel of showing this now with the Embrace of humanity because right in that okay so so there's this great Jewish commentary that I read I think I Found this in Yung as well and it was a meditation on the limitations of God and so it's like a Zen Co and so here's the proposition the question what does a being who's omnipresent omnipotent and um omniscient lack and you think well by definition nothing and he lacks limitation unless you're a Christian right right well he lacks limitation and so so and and that was

an answer in some sense to why what was the question why God and man are in A sense Twins and so and it hinges on this same idea is that there can't be someone who calls unless there's someone who receives and so but there is in this tradition right if Exodus was first we're whack with the Pharaohs because Genesis is first and because Exodus and the story of Moses's flight with you know all the water imagery and The Parting of the Seas right it's it there's so many mirrors between Genesis and exodus including the construction

of The Tabernacle and so because Genesis is first is what sets the foundation for the point that you two were were bringing up and the the prophets aren't just popping up in is it all right Dennis in the Hebrew tradition this is where you have the separation of powers you have the monarchy the priesthood and the prophets and the role of the prophets is abiding role they're the social critics who bring people back to the Covenant so the Covenantal idea do do they emerge are they like Neolithic Shaman do they emerge by vocation or they

are they're cold yes they C by God and you have dramatic cold and you can run away like Jonah right that's the most standard well and who wouldn't it is my sad analogy of of most Jews is that they're Jonah God has called us to bring the world to this text and most Jews have decided to flee I think we need to be careful at the same Time about sort of you know God's work you know Nature's work you know man's work I mean I think the the overall uh message as you might put it

is this is all in some sense God's work I mean the creation is God's work you know the running away is somehow within God's will the hardening of the heart of pharaoh is within God's will Moses his own birth and then being put in the river is somehow I mean this this whole the grand narrative here is meant to be Revelatory of the nature of what is most real and by definition nothing can fall outside of that but I guess maybe it's a matter of what would you call when you when you give people when

you grant to people who are your staff let's say which is relevant to later imagery in here their own domain of autonomy and maybe that's part of this building the the hierarchy that reaches down from the heavens is that it is all under the Dominion of the The Entity that's Superordinate that's beyond being let's say but that doesn't mean that each part doesn't have its part to play and its place and that that's actually real too yeah so I I take Steven's Point but the first two chapters of Exodus actually uh God is curiously absent

uh he he's it's really I I think that I think that it's because there's a direct parallel with the flood and even the even the I'm sorry this is I don't want to harsh but like in terms of narrative like I I if We look at the actual narrative structure and and Greg the the the killing of the the Hebrew children you have to understand it almost as if they're all dead except for Moses all the males have been killed except for Moses there's just one it's a reduction there's like this reduction so think about

Noah as well like everybody's dead there's just one there's this reduction which which manifests the seed right when you so it's like the story of Superman is is the same story it's like his whole planet is dead and now this last one it's as if he's gathered into himself all of the nature of what he is and now he is going to he's going to recast it and so I think that that's at least narratively I know it might cause moral problems to to people to to think about it that way but at least narratively

why would it cause a moral problem I don't know because people don't like that the idea that God would Just let the the children of of Egypt die but that pattern of the the killing of the children is repeated in scripture and in the story of Christ and in the story of Christ you have you have the same image where the King kills the kills the children and it's it's a it's it's a strange thing it's as if there's this concentration and then it it's not that God wants that to happen but that God transforms

evil into good all the time that's what God does he takes the Evil it's not that God wants evil but that he is constantly covering it with his with his Grace and His glory and so it's like this is the worst thing that could happen like kill all the children and then all of a sudden God's like no there's one we're going to reant the seed and it's going and so you can't you can't get rid of it it's like it's its meaning will return the law will return the Covenant will return you can't you

can't get rid of it humans have no power To destroy creation to Stephen's point then because I found the hardening of the heart is very is very struck by that going back to read it because it's like why keep hardening the heart right what's very interesting to your point is is that in conditions that are the utmost extreme to have good flourish that in some in some regards is the story of the ultimate most condensed version of good it's the most extreme example right like Christ story right It's the same thing so it's not that

it's a moral problem whe whether you view that as being literal metaphorical whichever way that you approach the text but it's it's also it's actually a it's actually the experience of everything everything works that way right so it's like Greek civilization dies and it's almost gone and so what do we do we try to save what do we save how what do we decide what we're going to say so it actually condenses into its Essence and Then that gets carried through to the next right it's an apple falls to the ground it rots everything falls

apart and then o surprise there's that hidden thing inside that seed which will now which will now Sprout up again well that's right and that's in in alchemy it's the jewel in the Toads had right in fian catharsis it's going back to the point of greatest trauma to find the thing that will liberate you right it's that's it's not only true historically And culturally it's true psychologically sociologic well we we also we glossed over the fact that in some sense that all the Hebrew boys were put to death and that there's a there's a structural

parallel between that and what happens in Christ's time because it's also an emphasis on the motif of lowly birth Dennis you referred to that yesterday that Moses is the son of two Ordinary People but it's it's not just that he's the son of two Ordinary People he's the Son of two ordinary people born into tyrannical catastrophe under the threat of death and I will return to the archet temple in some sense there um in that well that's true of all of us to some real degree and we're even wrestling that within our about that within

our culture now because we tend to view our culture as an atrocious tyranny and so we're children of an atrocious tyranny and all of us of course at Birth are susceptible to death because human Beings are unbelievably vulnerable at Earth At Birth and so it's it's it's the it's the lot of mankind so to speak and then out of that terribly threatened beginning can come the redeeming hero and that's definitely what happens in the Moses story and and and it's the Eternal story and it's all it's reflective in that sense of of the of the

story that you just laid out too do you do you all agree with Jonathan's comment that God turns all evil into Good is that a generally agreed to proposition at this table that certainly where the the you might say the philosophically arable idea that God is omnipotent has to lead I would say we're going to find out I mean that's partly what we doing what we do as we live for for the record I I've never understood that that line and I don't mean it at all disparagingly I I my love for America's Christians is

Well known and the Calamity of the death of Christianity is to me the Calamity of our time I want to make that clear but Christian cers began telling me that phrase I had never heard it in 15 years of Yeshiva that and and I'm troubled by it because if it's true then a why batt evil number two it it's doesn't it sort of leave it all up to God well yes if he's going to turn it into good I'm going to watch TV I don't understand why That isn't the the rational you do see some

of that just I just want to say one more thing it it reduces the the the evil that people have suffered in my opinion I can't tell a Jew who who saw his children gassed Hey listen God's going to turn this into good I mean maybe in the Hereafter that I do believe in very deeply but you don't mean in the Hereafter you all meant in this world oh oh well if okay so in the ultimate Analysis oh in the ultimate okay but all right so then then I'll go I'll go back to number one

why fight evil if he turns it into good anyway well I would say from I can't speak theologically I would say the way I look at that is the same way way in some sense that I uh interpreted the story of Moses is that one of the manners in which God transforms evil into good is by calling on us to do so and it isn't it without our I wouldn't say compliance But we don't transform bad into good either we destroy bad hopefully but we don't transform it the per the the raped woman remains raped

whether whe I if if we defeat did the Nazis but the Nazis caused I don't know tens of millions of people to to to die horribly the question is not whether terrible things in fact actually horrific things happen is whether there's any possibility of redemption of those very things right to what degree okay so by the way and I say This with love and I mean it I'm I'm not being in any way patronizing that's a Christian view of of suffering so I got to tell you this forgive me the uh what do you see

as an alternative I I I'll say it in a moment I just want to tell you how interested I am in this subject so I have I have always asked the question why to any phenomenon since my drove my parents crazy so I always everybody knows Jews complain more than other groups certainly more than Christians so that's a given I I even have a test get a a Christian get a Protestant Catholic church and a and a Jewish synagogue group together for lunch an ecumenical lunch and I range in advance to serve overripe uh uh

cantaloupe which group will complain the most everyone knows the answer the Jews will complain the most okay so that's not a riddle the riddle is why and I have a I have a fun Theory which I won't bother with and I Have a serious Theory and the serious theory is Jews look at suffering with the following statement it stinks and Christians look at suffering as being Christlike and that's a the difference in views of suffering which is fine I I love the fact that we don't agree on everything because we enrich each other but I

really do believe that the view of suffering is different the word Redemption as as was just used that God Will redeem this suffering is is is not a concept I am I am theologically or emotionally comfortable with may I just interject I I I think that that's extremely profound and something that we ought to bear in mind uh symbolically so um I'll bracket the the theological Dimension to it but if you think of the symbolism of the Cross then that is symbolism of the transformation of that which is unspeakably humiliating being tied up Naked tortured

to your death the most appalling death imagined in the Roman Empire as an image that is ultimately an image of Redemptive Redemptive yes um now there is a very powerful set of images in the Hebrew tradition of separating yourself from Evil right so one of them is here in the book of Exodus you separate yourself from the oppressor uh so you're not transforming the oppressor you're not transforming the evil you're separating Yourself from from it uh and of course another I'm not making a textual critical Germanic Point here but of course the Babylonian experience is

also an experience which is significant in relationship to this narrative right so um the reestablishment of um the the uh this the temple in Israel after the Babylonian exile so there's this very powerful Jewish or Hebrew Narrative of Separation yourself exactly exactly now to some extent there's a counter Christian imagery which is not that of Separation but as it were of integration and transformation now that seems to me a very intriguing opposition of I'm just talking about symbolism here rather than I was not brought up in the tradition you're describing that was for me a

one-sided very lopsided View and there judgment you take what happened to Sodom or you take the prophets are outraged against evil or our Lord you Know the tomb of Lazarus it says once he wept and three times the Greek he's Furious and know I I don't recognize what you're saying I was taught you should fight evil and overcome it you were brought up more Jewish than most Jews no well I so this is let me throw something out to the table and I I don't even know if I agree with this it's just a notion

so first of all um we'll bookmark the the overripe cantaloupe because I wouldn't stand for That so that's proof of that's proof of your argument here CU I don't know what's wrong with you yeah I mean that kind of experiment just unconscionable so first I want to just have that stated clearly but so part of the Jews being the chosen people part of that is to bring peace right that's part of being the chosen people is that right I think it's well ultimately there's peace because people will come to God and and God wants us

to be peaceful but part of Being the chosen people is to negotiate that with people of other faiths right okay so maybe having a different orientation towards suffering is part of the role of being the chosen people to keep calling attention when Christians are being perhaps to a Jewish mindset to accommodating I like both approaches I I I just wanted to illuminate that I didn't resonate to the original point of God turns everything into good the evil Remains evil our task is to conquer it but you can't transform it the the the the tortured individual

was tortured you can't un torture the person agree Jordan we warned you yesterday 15 minutes yeah we hav got to the keyse yet I just just a phrase here I just want to reread because I just find it so unbelievably beautiful and that is and the Lord said I have surely seen the Affliction of my people which are in Egypt and have heard Their Cry by reason of their task Masters for I know their sorrows I mean the claim here that the Cry of the human heart that that that any suffering or sorrow is present

to the creator of all things is a is an perhaps it's absurd perhaps it's idiocy but that's the claim here in this text right here something at least in US responds to that I mean if if if we're suffering and this Bears on the other point about the Redemption of suffering To some degree I mean you do you do see people grow as a consequence of contact with adversarial circumstances and privation and I know this I know the moral issue you're dealing with here because you don't want to justify Evil by the good that it

might be transformed into that doesn't justify the point you asked me or I don't know if you asked me but you mentioned yesterday well you did you said what do I resonate to the notion that Israel was built thanks to The Holocaust that that would be a good example of what you're talking about and and I I said I I was horrified by the notion right right right right right right but you also agree that when people face adver adversarial circumstances and even adversarial is not the same as crucifixion or a gas chamber that's there's

a finality to that evil you you can't grow from dropping dead you can grow if you continue to live Mhh there's a finality to the evil if biological death is death okay once we go to the Hereafter which I'm an adamant believer in then uh then then but we can't depend on that with regard to evil I know that God will punish Hitler doesn't mean I don't fight Hitler here but I don't think I don't I've never I don't think I've ever heard anybody suggest otherwise like to at least when I was suggesting that God

I agree with you but I'm only asking if God does turn All evil into good why fight evil I well because of this fractal structure like we are the sons of Adam right we are the mediators we are the ones that God put as those responsible for creation and so we have to play the we have to we have to become the hands and the feet of of God we we have to we are the or or else how is it going to happen and even in the story of Exodus right God doesn't just do

it alone right he could God could have done anything God could have Just done it alone he's he's like no I'm going to choose a man and I'm going to work through him and then not only him but then I'm going to have Aaron and then I'm going to have the Levites and then I'm going to this body so that all of this can happen through distrib yeah this distribution of of God's power into into into Humanity so I think that that's the way that I see it that we are when we when we don't

fight evil then we are not participating in God's desire God just just because God has the capacity to correct Injustice at you know eschatologically as it were you know beyond death doesn't I suppose license a kind of laziness uh in the fa of Injustice in the Here and Now part of our image bearing this perhaps part of the fact that we the reality that we bear the image of God is that we as it were act as he would act act as he would want us to act so so do you suppose this is I

mean i' I've wondered about this Christian notion that in some sense Christ TR triumphed over tragedy and death and even over hell and then because that's a Christian claim and then you think well if that's the case then what's up with all the tragedy and malevolence and hell and it seems to me it's a matter of a a confusion between two types of temporality is that something can be finished in an eternal sense like in an absolute sense where is it still has to take Place temporarily so the fact that this has been accomplished in

the I am the Alpha and Omega sense doesn't mean that we still are not called upon to bring forth the conditions that would make that possible so seed and the it's the seed and the tree again it's like there the seed and then you have the fruits that that come after but this in the seed is everything that the tree can be yeah right it has it all but then it has to actually Deploy in time and space and in and the facing all the the the the idiosyncrasies that it'll have to face it's a

very interesting point Jordan because I I guess from God's Timeless perspective as that God is a Timeless being and I think there's warrant for that in the pages of Exodus and elsewhere you you you might say that God apprehends all reality as a kind of blinding flash a sim a blinding flash of Simultaneity and evaluates it in those terms in those as it were Timeless terms and it may be though it's difficult for us to grasp this caught up in the horrors of the Holocaust and and uh other tragedies it's difficult for us from our

temporal perspective to grasp what that kind of evaluation might be yeah we're still trapped in the pages of the book even though the book might exist in the totality and and in some strange sense we're writing it as we go But that doesn't also mean that the final Victory hasn't been attained I mean those are very difficult Concepts to Grapple with simultaneously but but it's plausible to say that that sort of that that structure as God timelessly apprehends it isn't better it doesn't isn't more freighted with value and significance and Beauty than say a structure

in which no moral actions occurred at all no good no evil right right well that's I would say in some Sense that's the question of the ethical utility of being itself is if being is good as God pronounces it to be continually when creation is first unfolded then the struggle and the suffering are worth it in the I don't know what in the in the total view of like run into the problem of the justification of evil right but it's not a problem we run into that that is a problem that's the limits question you

said right in the absence of suffering There's No Limit right so there's nothing to to throw yourself up again there's nothing to be to Define meaning if there's not suffering so then you're sort of Full Circle to is that a is that a cruel God is that a well the answer to that seems to be something like well you have these limits and they're mortal limits and they they doom you to subjection to malevolence and tragedy and so what's the antidote to that and the antidote is Something like to conduct yourself in a manner Guided

by what's even higher than death and hell and then you can live in the face of suffering and malevolence and and have your cake and eat it too in some sense right unless God hardens your heart as he did the pharaoh's heart then you don't stand a chance yeah yeah well hopefully you haven't set yourself up for that to happen happened so it was too late for the Pharaoh well we like withes let's discuss that when we get to It a if we if we get to that that's right exactly yeah yeah so now therefore

Behold The Cry of the children of Israel has come unto me and I have also seen the oppression wherewith the Egyptians oppressed them another restatement of the fact that oppression and tyranny and slavery are intrinsically wrong come now therefore and I will send thee unto Pharaoh that thou May bringest forth my people the children of Israel out of Egypt and Moses said unto God who am I That I should go unto Pharaoh that I should confront the king and the Tyrant that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt and God said

certainly I will be with thee and this shall be a token unto thee that I have sent thee when thou Hast brought forth the people out of Egypt ye shall serve God upon this mountain and Moses said unto God behold when I come unto the children of Israel And shall say unto them the god of your fathers ha sent me unto you and they shall say to me what is his name what shall I say unto them so we can see here that Moses is pretty perplexed and puzzled by the the the and he's he's

a man who's capable of Shame and and sees himself as lowly in relationship to the Transcendent we already know that and so he's completely perplexed by the realization and no wonder that it's up to him it's also funny there's a little Bit of overripe cantaloupe going on here too Dennis because it's like God has appeared right and God has said I will be with you and he's like you know he's got all these objections it's pretty funny it's like well I've sort of laid this out well and there's a burning bush and we've we've had

this dialogue and he well what you know I don't speak that well I we're going to get to all of the you know he wants to is that is that humility or Pride why Pride well because it's God telling you and if he says you're the guy it's sort of like even if you think you're a fool you're the guy that's good you know and so while it's it's it's another one of those ambiguities you know what's the old line you're not great enough to be that humble something like that yeah so by the way

goes from who am I to who are you it's a very funny uh well that that's the other thing that's embedded In here is like well if I'm going to go tell these people that God sent me it's like what am I supposed to tell them and that's when we get into a very complex part of the text because this hasn't being I think it's important though that he doesn't speak well and I think that that's also because what's going to happen is that because he doesn't speak well then in many ways not just also

because he then become like a vehicle between God and Aaron and the people he Becomes a vehicle for God's word because the speech doesn't come from him it's not him and when he stands up and does things you know but but then God is saying no you're it's like you don't have to it's almost saying you don't have to speak well because I will be speaking through you you will become a vehicle for me this was so interesting to me with the bringing in of Aaron because like for me as a Storyteller it's like right

you know you elevate the Storyteller right it's the messenger but then Aaron the minute he has a chance to do anything like you know is running off making en calves and it's like so it goes back to what you're saying that Moses he's not the direct recipient of the Divine ration either he's second Moses doesn't work without him and he's completely a drift without Moses so it's it's very funny yeah that is exact well you wonder too if that's not a representation of the relationship In some sense between the genuine prophet and the politician cuz

the politici is necessary and has to play this game where Victory is everything and is going to be SED some sense by pragmatic and ideological concerns and that's actually necessary in order to bring the prophetic into the realm of policy right you can't do without that you can't just be above politics you can't have John the Baptist like screaming out in the desert that doesn't Make laws like it's not good for laws right right right right right right cor so by the way for me one it it's a very sad fact it seems to me

we're stuck in in human life we want leaders who don't want to be leaders that's true that is so true that's right right yeah that's right so what do you mean by that that we rather have people the people who want to be leaders 90% not all 90% want to be leaders because they want to be leaders Not because they want to do immense good and have no alternative in their life nistic and the want someone likees yeah but the guy who's like that doesn't become a leader right yeah yeah no it's really if if

God appeared to me in a burning bush I'd run for president but in the meantime I have no interest in doing so it's also the I think that part of that it's like the Heisenberg uncertainty principle too because as people start that's what that's what I've come to realize absolute power crups absolutely means I used to think it was like you get to a certain point and you just get headstrong and you have all the power in the world but as you start to engage in the act of leadership there's so many temptations that come

in exact it's even if you're even if you're somebody who started out with good intentions the will to resist that that's the acting Point you're entirely right yeah well you got to ask yourself Too what do you need to fortify yourself against those Temptations right when when you're exposing well yeah right no yes and and friends who will tell you the truth and you need to be embedded in these hierarchical structures yeah there's no doubt about that I once had a I do a lot of throwaway lines I I love the Absurd that keeps me

Saye out of nowhere on my radio show I once said you know folks wife in Sanskrit means she who finds flaws in her Husband I totally forgot I ever said that it was one of my crackpot throwaway lines and I moved on with the show you have no idea how many people I have met at speeches you know Dennis that Sanskrit definition of life God is that true well Ben Ben Shapiro told me that the the Hebrew word from which help meat is translated in the King James version so it means beneficial adversary that that's

a more accurate translation the One that means equal yes equal in that's right it means his equal uhuh it it's never translated correctly the Hebrew is a helpmate who is equal to him right right and so does it have that beneficial adversary flavor yes because neged also means against right right right right and well so you know there's a biological principle uh they call so the Sanskrit word right that's right that's right that's right it's called opponent processing and if you want to Make a it's Pro partly in partly why we have two hemispheres and

not one if you want to make a very fine finely gradated discrimination judgment you need two opposing forces and so for example imagine you want to just do something as simple as move your hand smoothly this way okay you can do that it's pretty smooth but this is way smoother and you do that by pushing against and then you can calibrate unb believably precisely and so if you have This adversarial relationship then you can calibrate much more precisely incidentally how we've discussed that's also true conservativism and true liberalism as a force to negotiate complex change

in a manner that smooth corrupted it's a mess yeah well the conservatives stand for what is and the Liberals in some stance stand for what could be it's the breaks and the and then you have the logos that mediates between those two yeah that that's the Necessity for free speech Okay so now and God says unto Moses I am that I am now that's This is complicated because this can be translated and has been many many ways because the tense my understanding is the tense of the verb is indeterminant so it could also be I

was that I am and I will become what I will become and so it's not only self-referential so God in some sense says that he is the essence of being itself or but it's not just being in the Present it's all the past all the present and all the future all at once and so here here's some other translations of that I am that I am the essence of being across time these are biblical translations there's an element of self- reference an element of awareness an element of becoming as unfolding an an idea that that

which was hidden will be revealed an element of to know the place for the first time in the TS Elliot sense the distinction between Being an objective existence all of that seems to be Tangled Up In This mystery of God's name and and he said thou Thou shalt thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel I am so it's is it being itself something like that being and becoming the ground of being the ground of being has sent me forth to address so it'll just help everybody I think that in Hebrew there's no am

there's no to to be has no present verb by the way it's very common Arabic Doesn't have it Russian doesn't have it because let's say I want to say in Russian I am a doctor y y it doesn't matter or I am Dennis y Dennis everybody knows you don't need am is really unnecessary when you think about it I Dennis is the same as I am Dennis no there's no question to The Listener oh he is Dennis so I don't it's an interesting question what does the present tense of the verb to be serve when

it's it's not really necessary but That's so however it's not right to translate this as I am what I am it really is I will be what I will be that that is the Hebrew may I say though and this comes back in a way to oza's point about the uniqueness of this passage right so this uniquely theistic perspective um is that I'd sort of agree with that but but I think one has to Nuance it a bit and partly if we go back to the you know moreover he said I am The god of

thy father the god of Abraham the god of Isaac the god of Jacob and Moses hit his face so there's this curious tension between the tribal side of this deity right so it's the god of a particular people but also this universal dimension right so it's a God who is not actually a tribal God at the same time like the god of the Egyptians right or the god of the Phoenicians or the the whoever so there's that interesting tension between the link With a particular people but also the universality the other thing I just wanted

to say was um that uh not withstanding all that you said about the Hebrew given the context in which this was translated through Alexandria uh and not least because of a Jew because of because of Pho and and and pho's uh um significance in that very significant uh Greek speaking Jewish culture um in the septu aent that um passage is Translated using the language of Plato So it then becomes ego so where Greek is an extraordinary language in the sense that having the definite article and the capacity to build participles in in in is it

inek is it I am the being I am the being as opposed to that which is fleeting and so that's how it's interpreted from fly from Pho onwards so there we get so just say so so what we get there is something very extraordinary so of course we're Right you're right to say this is something in a sense you uniquely hebraic this is the great you know hebraic Jewish contribution to western culture but it's fused actually um with an Athenian element one might say you know so and hence this extraord that part of the Union

between the Greek logos christianos of course when when um you know then of course it's translated into Latin as um osum or the am who I am and and but that tradition of linking it Into um uh this this philosophical tradition with its rather different uh background means that in the 17 century uh my ancestors in Cambridge as it were spiritual rather than uh literal could say that they were platonist because uh Plato was merely the attic Moses you know um of course again quoting alexandrians so we do have this interesting Fusion here okay so

one of the things I've been trying to puzzle out here recently with the Postmodernist insistence that even science itself is only an epistemological game in some sense it's only a Tower of Babel and their dispensation with the Transcendent object is that it it seems to me that on the on the Greek side of the logos equation maybe and the rational side that sort of branched into the Enlightenment and science the there's a recognition of the Transcendent that seems to be echoed in This platonic sense that allowed us to posit the existence of a Transcendent object

right because for a scientist there's a scientific theory but the scientist knows that the theory which is the map is not the territory but it's such a weird thing to pause it because if the reality isn't encapsulated in your con perception then it's uncon seizable it's just a Transcendent entity right it's it's a being beyond your conception and it might be an object it Is for scientists but the fact that it doesn't bear any it it it doesn't exist preconceived by your preconceived notions and then you refer to it you defer to it as a

scientist you say well this is the way I think reality is and this is the way it's manifested itself to me but I will test it and then I'm willing to be corrected by the Transcendent object and I don't know if you can get that this is why I thought you know with the nitian Announcement of the death of God the death of the Transcendent deity that we might have also seen the demise of objective science because we don't know to what degree science also depends on this be belief in a being that's beyond conception

right like technically Beyond conception I think there's a lot to that and we got to be careful about how maybe we you're using the word transcendence in two different ways so in the first sense transcend the trans Divine Transcendence is the Transcendence of SpaceTime of the entire of all reality distinct from God himself but then you moved into talking about Transcendence in the sense of what transcends our perceptual and cognitive capacities as the scientific Inquirer I think scientific inquiry is always sort of hedged in we you know we can't jump outside our conceptual skin we

can't jump outside our perceptual skin our linguistic skin this is is the strategy That stru we can't jump outside our a prior conceptions of space and time that might also be epistemological right yeah certainly k k thought that that space and time are like goggles and they're not kind of realities um and we could probably part that one for now but there are other senses in which science does need genuinely Transcendent real to appeal to genuinely Transcendent realities a good example would be mathematics um the more s it's not as if The more scientific discoveries

we make the less mathematical those conclusions are becoming um science is increasingly freighted with mathematics in fact a lot of physics now just is mathematics because as it were our ability to do physics through mathematics outstrips our Tech technological capacity to to to as it were well our embodied capacity to grasp absolutely right but we are appealing there to a domain that is not outside space it's outside time that Exists necessarily exists no matter what um and and that is a precondition of successful scientific inquiry that's not open to being constructed there preconditions too that

seem to unite the belief in a Transcendent deity with the belief in a Transcendent object if the purpose of the scientific inquiry and the pursuit of Truth in that direction is to improve the lot of mankind rather than to make us miserable slaves let's say or to reduce the Earth to Radioactive ashes then an ethic is guiding the scientific Enterprise and so this is something I really learned from Y and and I think all the work that's been done recently on the the uh what would you call it the necessary ethical framing of attention points

in the same direction is that if you don't approach the object with a relationship with God in mind then what the the wisdom the object reveals to you can easily be put to hellish purposes well I I think you Made this point in your Genesis lectures that there is real warrant in in Genesis and in in Exodus 2 for tying to the marriage of goodness and being that the two are really the same thing we talk about good and we talk we talk about goodness and we talk about being but they are really in in

the classical tradition certainly in the monotheistic tradition these are two aspects of the same thing and so that might just connect to connect it to your thought That scientific inquiry in rendering being and reality more intelligible is itself a disclosure a rendering of of goodness itself so that's that's something that's almost like that's another as that's to be brought into symphonic alignment right yeah right yes that's a good good way of putting it yeah a greater Attunement to the way and mathematic mathematics can be that right scientific inquiry can be that they're all it can

be beautiful even though it's Immaterial and they have to keep engaging for alignment right with something else well or or we get discordance and trouble those those are the Alternatives so I just bring out the the this beautiful way you put that James that the this revelation of being itself is then also revealed as good in its Transcendence and here you have God as a as a as a verb however that verb might be rendered not an object not not a river not a not a not a not a cow or a Tree or or

the Sun or or whatever but as a as a verb as a as a Transcendent you might say activity that is in all things and yet in that goodness that goodness is particular it's a it's a it's a Transcendent activity that that here in this text right here is said to to to care for human life you know they heard the Cry of the Egyptians and and I don't want to read this this text through the New Testament but it does seem to me that what's being suggested here is very Similar to you know the

the Lilies of the valley and this this not a sparrow not not a lash lost as Hopkins puts it and so what you have here in some sense I want to ask the table here is what you have here is is something like the suggestion that God is revealed as love I mean in this in this specific understand well yeah well when I when you were speaking about that I was thinking well what's the maternal spirit that that responds to The Cry of A baby you you can't exactly attribute that to the particular mother because

it's not the mother it's the maternal Spirit that's responding and then that's a reflection of the Divine so that would be a reflection of mother Mary from a Christian perspective let's say and it really is a it's a Transcendent phenomena what crying brings forth is love really that and and so the Cry of an infant brings forth maternal love and that's not That's not something that's Bound in the individual in any sense at all it's it's it's something Transcendent and it's Transcendent in that it transcends any given individual and so then that begs the question

what ontological status does it have right and we can't answer that question because we don't know how our own existence and our own Consciousness is bound up with the structure of being itself but it's but suffering definitely it can call forth Contempt it can call forth hatred but it can definitely call forth love and then love is the antidote to that suffering so and and I do think it's reasonable to say that that's in some real sense how the god of our of our heroic ancestors manifests itself through us is that you see the suffering

and that's what's happening with Moses you see the suffering and you're open to it so you're willing to grieve because of the suffering and not deny it and and that's The taking on of that suffering and it's the fact of the taking on of that suffering that cows forth within you a counter position that's certainly what's happening to Moses I mean he's having a dialogue with God about the terrible catastrophic suffering of the Hebrews and he's obviously willing to take that on even though he's leery about it and no bloody wonder he's will willing to

take that on as a as his Destiny right as his Destiny so despite his Insufficiency you know well then you can burrow that down to neurology Evolution and hormones and to your point right that reaction of a mother to the Cry of a baby right you it can be proved out here but that's not all that it is right because then you're into the train of the intellect that falls in love with itself right it's a line it's one piece of it but the pattern should be more well and I think it is like I

I think I mentioned yesterday I don't remember if It was in this context but France Deal's work on the structure of social hierarchies in chimpanzees shows pretty clearly that stable chimpanzee troops are predicated on the spirit of peacemaking and reciprocity that's the fundamental principle it's not power it's and so even among chimps there's this ethical right there it's ethical interaction there's no real other way of of saying or your argument about the the ratio of of dominant to submissive rats In play when they will exactly the same thing is that it's the spirit of play

that keeps rat societies alive but that thing doesn't exist on its own as just an odd rat Behavior right that's all about this a alignment let's say well and and you see while PP discovered play circuitry in mammals you also see it in birds I mean so that Spirit of voluntary Association and voluntary play which is I think really in some real sense the antithesis of power that's so deeply Instantiated biologically that it has its own independent circuitry so you see there an alignment and you'd expect that why wouldn't there be alignment between the biological

and the Transcendent how could there not be well we've lost that right we've lost this is the not to derail but our avatars of meaning getting removed from the basis of meaning we were discussing this earlier and so we're we're removing we're viewing things in their own little um Bubbles right in more ways than just our Twitter follow danger of reductionism in some sense right that's the tower Babble too but are we introducing a second yard stick with those sorts of evolutionary analyses because it seems like the Benchmark there is not sort of goodness or

Transcendent goodness or obligations successfully discharged but simply survival James I think what'll happen is that as the biological view of what constitutes appropriate strategies for Survival expands it will increase L detail with the ethical requirements because well for example what dewal has found out is that just and this is a step in that direction is that well it's not dominance that that makes for social organization it's something like reciprocity and and you might say well it's still too narrow to construe that as something only in the service of the propagation of genes which is how

Dawkins would look at it and I would say Well what do we know about genes they're really really complicated and God only knows what they're up to and so as the biological Vision expands and the theological Vision expands they're likely they're lik we can at least say that genes don't exercise morally significant free agency and therefore don't bring about actions that we could give we could evaluate in in in a moral way the idea I think that the the word survival is probably the bad it's a bad Word in this context because it if you

use the term the the continuation of being m let's use that word instead that is what what makes being continue and if and if you see it that way then all of a sudden it's not just a question of survival and then this idea that God reveals himself as the source of being and then not only that but then he will reveal to the people this is how you be right it's not just I am that I am then he's going to say this is if you want to Be in communion with me this is

how you have to act this is how you have you mentioned earlier Jonathan I think correctly you Drew Drew attention to to it Jordan that this human the doctrine is kind of human exceptionalism that we find in Genesis and exodus that that that human beings have a kind of dominion and a kind of power to subdue the created order and that and a responsibility there's a responsibility and that I think presupposes that we Have even if that we can think of ethical requirements at the sort of in the non-human sense there is some sort of

special ethical requirement special kind of aeny that is qualitatively distinct and puts us would also agree with that well certainly it's clearly the case that we are self-conscious in a way that other animals aren't and the way that's explained is that we bear the image of God that is to say the explanation is Given is that there is some aspect of us that is not biological well God is God is also here he knows that he is that he is and so do we well we we have that self-reflection that seems say we got to

humans always have to be f understood upwards never just downward and isn't that there as well in that that point you made about I don't know who it was now about you know where Moses says am I you know who am I who Am I who am I and then um you know God says well I am uh And and so there's is there not there a sense of the the yearning and linked to that question of well who in the human soul right the desiderium natural this this natural yearning which is the problem for

the naturalist I would say that there is this Instinct in the human soul for Transcendence a yearning for Transcendence which we find depicted in this um In this passage of that desire for something ultimate for something ultimately good ultimately true you know There's a literature on voluntary psychedelic use among animals so even as low as flies so yeah and there's quite a developed literature and so that yearning for the Transcendent might I mean it's particularly what would you say magnified in the human case but that seems to be reflected at nervous system levels way down

the chain of complexity really fascinating thing I go back often To that study they did with groundhogs that were risking to alert when a predator was near risk of themselves and then they saw that their their immediate progyny weren't in the area of risk and they couldn't figure out why they were risking themselves it's like was this some great heroic act what they figured out is with whatever the specified range was of risk if there was enough cousins that could constitute one half of the DNA of a of a of Offspring than it would Alert

like they knew at all times from from scent and by orientation in the community what would situated socially well so just just finish the point but so just because they're that's basically is like a hero is calling right to go forth on the benefit of the community and just because that happens to be something that's encoded genetically doesn't make that any less right so how is it encoded genetically right we get back to your the question that Jonathan Keeps kind of poking at that if everything everything goes back it's like which is the seed and

which is the tree right if the genetic coding is the same thing as a hero's journey to go out to go forth at risk uh to Endeavor voluntarily into the face of a risk that could well you see that reflected in the abrahamic call I mean Abraham is called out to this great adventure but God tells him forthrightly that his descendants will outnumber the stars and So you say well there's there's an alignment there between the Divine Call to Adventure and reproductive success in the most blatant literary in in the most blatant literary sense but

Abraham is free to refuse and it's morally praiseworthy that he that he accepts and that he accepts Destiny and I think that that's that's very significant that there must be something that transcends in in human agency or in any morally significant act that there must be Something in the agent that transcends determinism just transcends whether it's genetic or I think well there has to be in some sense because you can't I think one of the conversation one of the um consequences of my conversation with Roger Penrose assuming Penrose is right and he's been right a

lot about a lot of things is that an a system cannot exist in a universe constituted like ours that's only deterministic because the Horizon of the Future is literally not deterministic you cannot compute The Horizon of the future algorithmically now I know people who would dispute that but but Penrose isn't one of them so you can't say that it's s of scientific it's controversial it's a very good argument against computational theories of of mind and that's yes and that's really what he's focusing the other view is more at the risk of being simplistic bring it

back again to the uniqueness of the story and The immensity of what happens here this is a world shaking incident for certain reasons I mean every time I go to Cairo I look at the Great Pyramid of kufu it's incredible and it been there a thousand years before Moses how the Dickens I said to you Greg I want you to free the wigers I mean something like that is what he's being called to and he's got a confused identity what he's got a slavish people he's got an impossible regime to overcome the Longest lasting one

in all human civilizations and one of the most powerful he only the immensity of who he meets here is enough for to call him to that well and it's not he doesn't just free the he Hebrews from the Egyptians he frees sequential multiple generations of people over a span of 2,000 years from whatever Tyrant happens to oppress them and that's really something so it's it's For Better or Worse Oliver Cromwell says Exodus was my president so so you Take the Negro spirituals go down Moses right exactly why does this incredible text of Freedom Inspire pip

it's the difference that the Lord makes so that's to the to the the victory of Christ in some sense is that Moses didn't just triumph over the temporal Egypt he trans he triumphed over the Eternal Egypt and we can see that playing itself out but people still have to do it and so you could say well the Christian view at least is that Christ triumphed over Death and hell but that doesn't mean that people don't have to still do it that's the significance I think of Jesus remarking in I think it's John chapter 8 before

Abraham was Amy I am am and it's interesting the immediately after that I think it says and they went away and and plotted to kill him ored plotted plotted to Stone him this is an incredibly provocative act yeah you might say so thing to say that's right just kind of an alignment whether he says elsewhere I Think in John 10 that I and the father are one it's it's it's incredibly provocative um so there's a political Dimension but there's also a metaphysical universal dimension that is that is encoded into this strange saying I am that

I am or I will be what I will be I mean it's I think it's quite instructive that there's disagreement and and deep ambivalence among translators and and between Jews and Christians as to how we how we Understand this name that we that that it's sort of ungraspable we talked about the apophatic yesterday the way that you know you can't you Moses is not naming God he's receiving a name but even that name is is it's like a strange name it's a name that's not a name at the same slipper as if the name of

God appropriate can't be fitted into the system of human naming to EXA exactly we can develop a taxonomy of of the natural order in virtue of our Command to have Dominion and over nature and to subdue it and to name the animals and so on but we can't name name God that would be elevating ourselves to as it were arting to it's also it's so interesting in that regard that it's also a self-referential name because names aren't self-referential they they put things in a category that that that act of self-reference does take the name itself

outside of the domain of names and it takes God himself outside the domain of Gods uh black whole name that's right God is no longer a God in on on this understanding that is to say God is is as the ground of being hav got he does name himself yah well right and and do you know do do you know what Yahweh means in Hebrew it's it for reasons I never figured out when I wrote my commentary I didn't see this anywhere I'm sure I'm not the first to point this out it means is yeah

God's name is is right and wasn't there weren't there Prohibitions against uttering the name we we we are in in Judaism you're not allowed to say we say instead uh Hashem the name or when we pray we would say Adonai which means the Lord but we never say God's so we run into the same issue here where we have a name that is like this name but is also not a name because you can't even say it yeah right except the priest on the high the high holy day of atonement but even that name is

also It's like a very strange name because it's a name that's also not a it's a name that it just is it's like it well is again back to is that's is the ground it's the ground all being in a way it recapitulates Genesis if you think of of Genesis the first verses of Genesis God is the creator of all reality distinct from himself that is God is the source of all being all existence distinct from himself and there can only be one there can only be one existence and therefore There can only be one

thing that is identical with existence or the source of all existence when you point out the chimpanzee thing which is obviously very interesting the the point is I assume that acting good works better is that that right definitely well then there a structure to act something like and I buy that and I think that's important I just want to note on a pragmatic level arguing with people who want to do bad that well you should know that in The long run it doesn't work is not effective no I that's God saying do not murder is

a better way right and even that doesn't always work I'm is that I'm not sure that's always it's always true because that would be to say that human self-consciousness has is of no merit uh I'm not saying it always works but that's why I said the bad I I I agree that it can work for some yes but but not everyone would be convinced by that argument even if they Believed it I think in some ways though the power of of a story is to have the long term right to have the abstract grounded in

the specific and so when something is aligned you've managed to align the shortterm the middle term and the long term and that's the that's the ultimate expression of of force of a moral argument is when those things come into a line and they're way out of whack right now right we have a lot of of people and Powerful groups and organizations are making lots of short-term decisions and there's a way to try to align them again I mean that's some of the aim of this discussions like this I'm going to ask everybody to let me

go through the next four verses because we're coming to a close today and we should close off chapter three are we even going to do that yeah well I think we can do that um and God said moreover unto Moses thou thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel the Lord God of your fathers the god of Abraham he's reminding them the god of Isaac and the god of Jacob has sent me unto you this is my name forever and this is my Memorial unto all generations so he's reminding them of their tradition go

and gather the Elders of Israel together so they're the proxy uh representatives of God in some real sense gather the Elders of Israel together and say unto them the Lord God of your fathers the god of Abraham Isaac And Jacob appeared to me saying I have surely visited you and seen that which is done to you in Egypt and I have said I will bring you up out of the Affliction of Egypt into the land of the Canaanites hites amorites peit perizzites and hivites and the jebusites don't want to forget about them unto a land

flowing with milk and honey and they shall hearken to thy voice remind them of the god of their ancestors and say that you had an Encounter they shall hearken to thy voice and thou shalt Come Thou and the Elders of Israel so now they're on his side unto the king of Egypt and you shall say unto him the Lord God of the Hebrews hath met with us and now let us go we beseech thee three days journey into the Wilderness that we may sacrifice to the Lord Our God and I am sure that the king

of Egypt will not let you go no not by a mighty hand and I will stretch out my hand and smite Egypt With all my wonders which I will do in the midst thereof and after that he will let you go that's a that's an intimation of the exacerbation of tyranny I would say and then it's its demise at its own hands in some sense and I will give this people favor in the sight of the Egyptians and it shall come to pass that when you go you shall not go empty but every woman shall

borrow of her neighbor and of her that sojourneth in her house jewels of Silver and jewels of gold and reignment and you shall put them upon your sons and upon your daughters and you shall spoil the Egyptians so the prophecy here is that not only will the Egyptians resist and then submit but that the Israelites will leave under the influence of God in something approximating Triumph and that's the end of chapter 3 and the end of today and we'll go over the end of that again tomorrow and and Pull into the next chapter and so

thank you all gentlemen and for those of you who are watching and listening and to the dailywire film crew and production people for making this possible and welcome Greg it was great to have you along for the for the trip thank you pleasure to be here why is the First Choice somebody who speaks who can speak for as a proximity to God requires a sort of inarticulateness that the closeness to God means it can't be conveyed as clearly and thus the need for that's a really I never thought about that that's actually a very interesting

idea we saw that echoed with Moses I mean Moses walks by the burning bush but as we all noted he does turn to notice and so I would say we do have access to experience of God if if we pay enough attention and we pay enough attention to the things that in some sense transcend our current parochial Conceptualizations I I got a call from a guy in San Francisco this is the the the joy of doing a radio show who was the head of no Circ not only anti- circumcision but was working to have his

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