David Capes
Which is what we have today. Over on my shelf, I’ve got The Voice, and then I have the King James Bible and the American Standard Bible and English Standard version. All of those are a little bit different. They’re translating the same [Hebrew and Greek] text, but they have a little different translation philosophy.
Seth Ehorn
Yes, that’s absolutely right, and it’s important. If we want to talk about a New Testament author, for example, knowing a wider context of a particular book, we ask, which wider context. Is it the one that maybe lacks a particular account in a manuscript tradition, or that has a truncated version of that account in a particular tradition. When we want to go back and say Paul knows this, or Matthew knows this, are we doing our analysis on the basis of a much later Hebrew text that’s been translated into English. Or are we imagining this Greek text is one that they might have had, and it looks a little different? There’s a lot of methodological things that we can learn from that first chapter on Exodus in the Second Temple period that Drew did well.
David Capes
Let’s talk a little bit about a couple of the other authors. Jeannine Brown wrote “Exodus in Matthew’s Gospel.”
Seth Ehorn
Yes. She does a great job. She’s a wonderful Gospel scholar and has worked on Matthew since her doctoral dissertation, on disciples in Matthew’s Gospel. She takes a nice thematic approach in that chapter, thinking about certain themes that emerge. She begins with Moses, Israel and Jesus, thinking about how there’s patterning of Jesus. Is he more like Moses, or is he more like Israel? And are these overlapping categories to a certain extent?
David Capes
And in some way is he an anti-Moses? A different figure altogether, but who has somewhat of a similar story in [his] life. And she’s very much into the idea of story. Gospels as Stories, which is one of her more recent books. You’ve got people like Dan Gurtner and Andreas Kostenberger. You wrote “Exodus in the Disputed Pauline Letters”, and you discovered that there’s not a lot of references to Exodus in those particular letters.
Seth Ehorn
That’s right. It’s not an explicit theme or explicit scriptural resource, maybe in the same way it is in some of the other Pauline letters in the so-called Hauptbriefe. The major letters.
David Capes
Which are Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians and Galatians.
Seth Ehorn
That’s right but it does show up in a few different places. It shows up in Ephesians, where you have a household code. And as part of the household code, the author pulls in the book of Exodus as a proof text for honoring one’s father and mother. What’s interesting there is, you see how the household code is adapting the Decalogue. Because the Decalogue is really about adults honoring their fathers and mothers. Taking care of them as they age. That’s exactly the way that Jesus uses the same text in the Gospels. Think of Mark 7 where Jesus is in a discussion with scribes and Pharisees, and he talks about honoring one’s father and mother. And the accusation there is, you’re using this Corban, this gift idea,
to give money to God, rather than using your money to take care of your parents.
And he says, you’re breaking the commandment to honor your father and mother. I’m being a bit paraphrastic there, but that’s the sense of it. And when you get to Ephesians, it is a text about children, young children. Some of the languages are adapted to make it more about young children. I’m certainly not saying that Paul here is doing something beyond the spirit of what the Decalogue means.
David Capes
Playing fast and loose with the text.
Seth Ehorn
Yes, but he’s certainly re-deploying it in a way that is broader and bigger than the Decalogue itself was presenting.
David Capes
But this is part of what rabbis did. Rabbis took texts and sometimes applied them in different ways, that they felt like were consistent with the original.
As you begin the book, you talk about something in the forward. And I hadn’t thought about this in a while. Exodus themes are just so powerful. When you think about the Civil Rights Movement, and Martin Luther King Jr. It’s so, so powerful. And I didn’t know about those themes in Hamilton you were telling me about, because I’ve never seen Hamilton.
There are certain themes about liberation and oppressors and release from captivity that are just so powerful. I think of the songs from this slave period. Often called spirituals, they speak about Moses and going down to Egypt and saying, let my people go. Those become redeployed, not in the biblical exodus situation, but in the modern 1800s in America. Or it could be anywhere else. But these are powerful ideas that drive us.
Seth Ehorn
Yeah, I think it shows how you can have very linguistic and precise references to the book of Exodus and the narrative of Exodus, but you can also have what I’d call storied illusions. And these are all happening at the story level. We’re not interested in every little detail of what Moses did, but there’s a general narrative arc of a leader who brings people to freedom.
And that’s what’s happening on the story level. Maybe George Washington, if it’s in the case of the musical Hamilton. George Washington, maybe is the Moses figure, or maybe it’s Hamilton, and they are leading people to a new exodus, to a new freedom. All of the little details don’t matter so much as that large story piece. The same thing is going on with Martin Luther King, Jr. I’ve been to the mountain top. I’ve been to the mountain. He’s seen the glory. And he’s evoking a prophetic persona that is deeply, deeply biblical and resonates with his audience.
David Capes
He may not get to the promised land. And he didn’t because he was assassinated not long after that speech. These are very powerful moments. One of the things that we see sometimes, even within the Old Testament, are these ideas of a new exodus that might be coming, and some New Testament writers pick up on those things,
Seth Ehorn
That’s right. There’s this idea, and it’s been popularized by scholars like N.T. Wright, but others certainly speak about it as well, that the Exodus and then the exile, which is also patterned on Exodus, is a recurring motif. Jews in the Second Temple period living in Israel-Palestine might look at the Roman oppressors and say we’re not in Egypt, but we sure are oppressed. And what models do they have to imagine freedom from that? Exodus and exile provide the models for that. So, when we start to think about mapping Jesus and Paul and other figures, we start to think maybe one of the reasons they’re going to this text is because they’re trying to answer those kinds of questions. Who will deliver us from the oppression of Rome, or who will deliver us from the oppression of the spiritual powers that
control all things? Israel’s scriptures, in particular these key salvation kind motifs, texts like Exodus give them a language, a grammar, and a story to actually talk about that.
David Capes
Well, it’s a terrific book. It’s entitled “Exodus in the New Testament.” It’s part of the Library of New Testament Studies. And there are some great chapters in there. I wish we had more time to explore all of them. But now you’re on to Jeremiah, which is, wow going to be a big, thick book.
Seth Ehorn
It’s going to be a really great book. I’ve got a wonderful cast of contributors to that upcoming book.
David Capes
We look forward to that, and we wish you well in this book and with others Seth Ehorn, in your new life here in Houston.
Seth Ehorn
Thank you so much.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
