In light of the debate sparked by Christian Bale referring to Moses as a terrorist (msnbc/the-last-word/religious-scholars-react-actor-christian-bale-calling-moses-terrorist), heres something on the topic from Create Your Own Religion Moses’s Cute Little Death Squad Understand this story and you’ll understand what drives people to fly airplanes into buildings. Understand this story and you’ll understand what pushes people to kill and be killed in the name of God. Understand this story and you’ll understand the forces at the roots of all the Crusades, 9/11s, Inquisitions, and other religiously motivated forms of violence that have drowned human history in rivers of blood. It’s one of the most meaningful moments of the Old Testament. The Hebrew tribes have just escaped decades of enslavement in Egypt and Moses is the man of the hour. Not only has he led this daring bid for freedom, but when Pharaoh’s armies gave chase, he thwarted their efforts by parting the Red Sea. With little time to rest on his success, Moses is now called up Mount Sinai for a face-to-face meeting with the one and only God. As thunder and lightning fill the air, God gives Moses the stone tablets containing the Ten Commandments—the essential laws forming the moral foundations of Western religions. This is such a central, climactic episode that even people who have never read the Bible are familiar with it. Less well known, however, but by no means less important, is what happens right after. What follows after the delivery of the Ten Commandments, in fact, is at the heart of our story. While Moses is hanging out with God at the top, at the bottom of the mountain the Hebrew tribes are growing restless. Many days have already passed since Moses left, and no one can be certain whether he is ever coming back. For all they know, he could be dead. Everyone has seen fire and smoke enveloping the summit, so his prolonged disappearance raises several eyebrows. Worn out by the wait, some people, who were less than fully sold on Moses’ insistence on monotheism to begin with, decide to kill time by having a ceremonial feast around the statue of a golden calf—a classic symbol of one of the fertility deities worshipped in those days by polytheistic people throughout the Middle East. By the time Moses comes down the mountain, he finds himself in the midst of a full-on orgiastic ritual: wild music, naked bodies of men and women dancing themselves into a frenzy, and perhaps even juicier stuff that biblical authors are too bashful to describe in nitty-gritty detail. To say that Moses is not pleased would be an understatement. Rather than saying “Hey guys, would you mind keeping the music and the moaning down?” or simply making fun of the worship of a funny looking cow, Moses smashes the tablets with the Ten Commandments and gathers his most loyal followers. “Who is on the Lord’s side?” he yells out. “Let him come unto me. Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbor.” Yes, you read right. Moses organizes a religious death squad that will end up massacring 3,000 fellow Jewish tribesmen by hacking them to pieces with swords. Let’s look at it again. “Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbor.” This is Hitler speaking. It is Stalin speaking. It’s Mao. It’s Pol Pot. It’s Torquemada. These are the words of all the self-righteous fanatics in history who ever felt entitled to wipe out anyone daring to think differently from them.
Posted on: Mon, 15 Dec 2014 17:07:57 +0000
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