Exodus Popular Quotes

The theory of exodus proposes that the most effective way of opposing capitalism and the liberal state is not through direct confrontation but by means of what Paolo Virno has called “engaged withdrawal,”mass defection by those wishing to create new forms of community. One need only glance at the historical record to confirm that most successful forms of popular resistance have taken precisely this form. They have not involved challenging power head on (this usually leads to being slaughtered, or if not, turning into some—often even uglier—variant of the very thing one first challenged) but from one or another strategy of slipping away from its grasp, from flight, desertion, the founding of new communities.

Unfortunately, identifying Ramses II as the pharaoh of the Exodus, which is the identification most frequently found in both scholarly and popular books, does not work if one also wishes to follow the chronology presented in the Bible.

In one of his essays William Placher comments on a time when the theological use of the Bible presupposed a deep knowledge of what the Bible says.1 The example he serves up is from the final pages of Calvin’s Institutes, where the Reformer thinks through the issue of what Christians should do if they find themselves under a wicked ruler. Placher notes that Calvin reflects on Daniel and Ezekiel regarding the need to obey even bad rulers; he weighs the command to serve the king of Babylon in Jeremiah 27. He quotes from the Psalms, and he cites Isaiah to the effect that the faithful are urged to trust in God to overcome the unrighteous. On the other hand, he evenhandedly notes episodes in Exodus and Judges “where people serve God by overthrowing the evil rulers,” and texts in 1 Kings and Hosea where God’s people are criticized for being obedient to wicked kings. He cites Peter’s conclusion before Gamaliel, according to Acts: “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). From these and other biblical passages, he proceeds to weave nuanced conclusions. We should disobey what governement mandates if it violates our religious obligations. By contrast, Christians should not normally go around starting revolutions. But those who are in positions of authority should deploy that authority to deal with those who exploit others. Even violent revolutionaries may in mysterious ways perform the will of God, though of course they may be called to judgment on account of their evil. Placher then comments: My point is not to defend all of Calvin’s conclusions, or even all of his method, but simply to illustrate how immersion in biblical texts can produce a very complex way of reflecting within a framework of biblical authority, compared to which most contemporary examples look pretty simple-minded. We can’t “appeal to the Bible” in a way that’s either helpful or faithful without beginning to do theology. Theology begins to put together a way of looking as a Christian at the world in all its variety, a language that we share as Christians and that provides a context rich enough for discussing the complexities of our lives. Absent such a shared framework, we can quote passages at each other, but the only contexts in which we can operate come from the discourses of politics and popular culture.2

The fact that Zipporah's name occurs twice is also no accident, inasmuch as the reader is now introduced to the woman who will have a prominent role in God's plans for Moses. It is not entirely incidental that this prominent attention is paid to Moses' marrying a non-Israelite; contrary to popular impression, the composition of the Israelites was simply not genetically/ethnically monolithic but rather a matter of faith as opposed to flesh.149