And it was important in a way that the story of Cain and Abel and other events that get much shorter shrift were not. Maintaining the tabernacle and the priestly rituals were the most essential religious duty. It is a generalization that the outer trappings of faith are probably more important than moral instructions or even belief itself. We tell the religious communities apart by the design of their temples, the vestments of their priests, and the specific rituals they perform. You're a Lutheran or a Catholic or Armenian Rite Orthodox because of the building you enter on Sunday and the specific mumbo jumbo that goes on in it. Most of the faithful know little, if anything, about the theological differences among them.
So the Hebrews demonstrated to the world, and to each other, that they worshiped this particular God, and were chosen of him, by following these instructions. However, it's incredibly tedious and I don't expect you to actually read it.
27 “Build an altar of acacia [KJV "shittim"] wood, three cubits[a] high; it is to be square, five cubits long and five cubits wide.[b] 2 Make a horn at each of the four corners, so that the horns and the altar are of one piece, and overlay the altar with bronze. 3 Make all its utensils of bronze—its pots to remove the ashes, and its shovels, sprinkling bowls, meat forks and firepans. 4 Make a grating for it, a bronze network, and make a bronze ring at each of the four corners of the network. 5 Put it under the ledge of the altar so that it is halfway up the altar. 6 Make poles of acacia wood for the altar and overlay them with bronze. 7 The poles are to be inserted into the rings so they will be on two sides of the altar when it is carried. 8 Make the altar hollow, out of boards. It is to be made just as you were shown on the mountain.
9 “Make a courtyard for the tabernacle. The south side shall be a hundred cubits[c] long and is to have curtains of finely twisted linen, 10 with twenty posts and twenty bronze bases and with silver hooks and bands on the posts. 11 The north side shall also be a hundred cubits long and is to have curtains, with twenty posts and twenty bronze bases and with silver hooks and bands on the posts.
12 “The west end of the courtyard shall be fifty cubits[d] wide and have curtains, with ten posts and ten bases. 13 On the east end, toward the sunrise, the courtyard shall also be fifty cubits wide. 14 Curtains fifteen cubits[e] long are to be on one side of the entrance, with three posts and three bases, 15 and curtains fifteen cubits long are to be on the other side, with three posts and three bases.
16 “For the entrance to the courtyard, provide a curtain twenty cubits[f] long, of blue, purple and scarlet yarn and finely twisted linen—the work of an embroiderer—with four posts and four bases. 17 All the posts around the courtyard are to have silver bands and hooks, and bronze bases. 18 The courtyard shall be a hundred cubits long and fifty cubits wide,[g] with curtains of finely twisted linen five cubits[h] high, and with bronze bases. 19 All the other articles used in the service of the tabernacle, whatever their function, including all the tent pegs for it and those for the courtyard, are to be of bronze.
20 “Command the Israelites to bring you clear oil of pressed olives for the light so that the lamps may be kept burning. 21 In the tent of meeting, outside the curtain that shields the ark of the covenant law, Aaron and his sons are to keep the lamps burning before the Lord from evening till morning. This is to be a lasting ordinance among the Israelites for the generations to come.
Footnotes:
- Exodus 27:1 That is, about 4 1/2 feet or about 1.4 meters
- Exodus 27:1 That is, about 7 1/2 feet or about 2.3 meters long and wide
- Exodus 27:9 That is, about 150 feet or about 45 meters; also in verse 11
- Exodus 27:12 That is, about 75 feet or about 23 meters; also in verse 13
- Exodus 27:14 That is, about 23 feet or about 6.8 meters; also in verse 15
- Exodus 27:16 That is, about 30 feet or about 9 meters
- Exodus 27:18 That is, about 150 feet long and 75 feet wide or about 45 meters long and 23 meters wide
- Exodus 27:18 That is, about 7 1/2 feet or about 2.3 meters
5 comments:
From today's post:
"20 “Command the Israelites to bring you clear oil of pressed olives for the light so that the lamps may be kept burning. 21 In the tent of meeting, outside the curtain that shields the ark of the covenant law, Aaron and his sons are to keep the lamps burning before the Lord from evening till morning. This is to be a lasting ordinance among the Israelites for the generations to come.'
Clearly, one major difference between Judaism and Christianity is that god says nothing at all about using VIRGIN olive oil--much less extra virgin :-)
But of course, that whole "virgin" thing is apparently a mistranslation of "young woman" ... at any rate, reading all this stuff in the original language would be a WHOLE DIFFERENT experience than ANYONE in American churches and synagogues has ... of course, there are orthodox shuls where they do, in fact, read and understand it in the original. But I'm speaking of reading it not only in the original language, but in the original CONTEXT. And for that, we'd either have to go back in a time machine ... or, maybe, be a scholar ... but still, nothing captures the zeitgeist of any time period except for having been there. I suppose it'll never happen, that whole time machine thing ... not sure it would solve much if it did, because a lot of folks would go back and see what they want to see anyway, or what they expect to see, but not what's happening. But at least I'd get to see the shittim!
Yes, it's a challenge to imagine the original context in which this document emerged and what exactly it meant to the people of the time and place. But the fact is we don't know much about it. It definitely wasn't written until well after the time these events purportedly took place, and in fact they never took place. So we're trying to understand a work of fiction that was written while the Kingdom of Judah was under the rule of the First Persian Empire in the 5th century BCE, although it probably draws on somewhat older sources. The consensus of historical scholars today is that Israel emerged in Canaan, from an indigenous culture, somewhere around 800-1,000 years before the Torah was compiled, but later than the purported Exodus. So this is a foundational myth composed within the Kingdom of Judah.
Same problem with the Christian bible: the people who wrote it never knew Jesus (Yehoshua ben Yosef), on whose life and teachings the book is supposed to be based!
It is in fact a matter of legitimate controversy whether the person depicted in the gospels ever existed. I think that's a largely meaningless question. What degree of similarity with an actual historical figure would be needed to say that Jesus existed in some sense?
Right. He most likely existed and did not "toot his own horn," so his concepts were co-opted and bastardized by Paul (formerly "Saul") and others for their own reasons.
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