Sunday Sermonette: Bring on Cecil B. DeMille

The story we are about to read is not only the foundational myth of the Jewish people. It has also become a foundational myth of American Christian identity thanks to the 1956 movie starring Charlton Heston. The movie actually differs from the Biblical story in minor respects, but more important I think is that it fills in the blanks. The Biblical account is quite vague as to historical context, and offers little in the way of visual detail or specificity of action. It ' s mostly an outline, concerned with plot but little concerned with character. (The Torah doesn ' t get subjected to much literary criticism but I ' m willing to go there.) The movie however has made the story vivid, and it ' s the version that people actually know, that fills their imaginations. So let ' s get started, with our critical eyes open.Now a man of the tribe of Levi married a Levite woman,2 and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months.Again, this is typical of the Exodus story. These people are complete blanks, we don ' t even know their names.3 But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket[a] for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile.4 His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him.5 Then Pharaoh ’s daughter went down to the Nile to bathe, and her attendants were walking along the riverb...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs