Meditation 1197
Passover makes no sense
by: John Tyrrell
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Passover has never made any sense to me.
Neither has Easter for that matter, but Passover takes precedence - without Passover, there really wouldn't be any Easter - it is contingent on Passover.
Now I'm not arguing against Jewish people celebrating Passover - who wouldn't celebrate the saving of their firstborn when all around lost theirs. No - it's the very details of the Passover story that make no sense.
We have Moses giving God's message to Pharaoh that all the firstborn in the land of Egypt except the firstborn of the Jews will die if he does not let the Jews go.
We have God acting like a dick again and hardening Pharaoh's heart so he'll deny the request - because God really wants to get on with another mass killing.
Nothing new there - we've seen God acting like a dick throughout the whole plagues scenario.
Where my problem is, is that God apparently does not know who the Jews are. He can't tell them apart from the Egyptians. This even though the Jews have made a point of getting circumcised. Even though the Jews are his chosen people. God just does not know.
If I was Moses, I'd be "We've cut of part of our dicks for you and you still can't tell us apart? What happened to the omniscience?"
But God doesn't know. The Jews have to go through a whole rigamarole with finding the right type of lamb, killing it, cooking it according to God's special secret recipe, and putting some of the lamb blood on the door-posts and the lintel.
And the blood is critical: "when I see the blood, I will pass over you." And that blood had better be on both door-posts and the lintel - just to make sure God sees it.
We've got several million people here (600,000 men on foot plus women and children) slaughtering a few hundred thousand lambs and putting blood on their door-posts and lintels just so that God would know who was Jewish and who wasn't.
That makes no sense. They are his chosen people.
And not a single Egyptian noticed what the Jews were doing. Because an Egyptian of any intelligence would have thought "There's some serious shit going down lately and it's been missing the Jews completely. They must know something I don't. I'm going to get me some of that blood and paint it onto my door-posts and lintel too. Better warn my friends and relatives too."
Seriously. The story makes no sense.
That is why it's religion, I guess.
Note:
Actually, from a Jewish perspective, it probably does make more sense than I give it credit for above. Going strictly by the OT, God is not omnipotent and not omniscient. He makes mistakes. He's a little open to criticism. He can be argued with. His mind can be changed. And a lot of Jewish scholars seem to accept such a God.
Drop the story into a Christian Bible and claim, as does Christianity, an omnipotent, omniscient God, and once again, I say - the story makes no sense. As does the Easter tale which depends upon Passover. It makes no sense either.
One minor (?) correction. Apparently the ancient Egyptians practiced circumcision too. There are those who claim that it was from them that the Israelites actually learned circumcision and use this idea as "proof" that the Exodus tale is true (and thereby rejecting the idea that God told the Israelites to circumcise - thus insanely trying to prove the bible by denying part of it.) In any event, this undermines my suggestion that God could have used circumcision to tell them apart. But still - God should have known who were member of his chosen people without blood on their door-posts and lintels.
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