Just a Burning Bush

I have mentioned before that I have a cynic in me always acting out. Even in moments of deep awakened faith. This nature makes me question the God described by a people lost to slavery for centuries. It was long after their escape that the older stories were written, stories either passed down as claimed by the writers, or scripted by a mere human's memory or creativity. 

Would a slave people be entitled to education? How then were these stories passed down through so many decades until they were jotted down??  Would word of mouth keep the factual accuracy? Or would the storyteller just garnish in titbits to instil hope and marvel in kids gathered around him in evenings -perhaps the only joy they were entitled to as slaves in a foreign land?

 The answer is obviously not. All my reading has given me enough evidence that these 'passed down stories' were woven from the faith of their masters- Babylonians. From the myths they saw acted out for their masters in public places, from stories they overheard while attending to their little masters, from the sentiments and marvel these stories inspired came a great God who would seek them, aid them and be above even their masters.

But one thing holds firm in all these discrepancies. The existence of a supreme power, the existence of one definitive beginning to all of mankind's being and imagination. While the Babylonians looked up towards the sky to access that, those on the ground who weren't allowed to even look upwards in those moments weaved their own mind maps and passed them down into a faith.  But they wanted the God for themselves and when he answered them by helping them out of that God-forsaken land, they decided that HE was theirs to claim and shall remain so for eternity. So ofcourse he needed a new name.

Elohim. 

Perhaps Mosses decided that. Here he was looking for a forgotten God , seeking guidance from the God of his ancestors, impaired in speech, feeling inadequate for what he thought needed to be done - free his people- when he heard what was introduced as the God of his forefathers. But how would he convince his struggling hopeless people to follow him. Would they be convinced he could do it if they didn't know they were backed by a grander more powerful master than the masters they served? Would they believe him if he didn't even know the name of that 'voice'? And if he did hear a voice, how could he introduce the voice that introduced itself as 'Yahweh' to a people that had forgotten the very word spoken of by their ancestors?  El- 'mighty' or 'strong' seemed appropriate to describe his experience, and 'him' for what he remembered about the plurality of the God described to him by his mother as he grew up under her care and faith-Elohim. And that's exactly how Mosses begins, and later starts in Genesis 1:1.  

The name helped convince the people of a grander backup, his might, his authority by being the creator and made it personal to them as a people for multiple reasons. One, it worked upon plurality of the God of their ancestors, two it distinguished their God from idols and other gods of their masters. How convenient.

This deduction somehow also convinces me that the book of Genesis was indeed the work of Mosses, his brain child or life's work to keep the people he brought out  monotheistic and grateful. A remarkable way to ensure unity, and prevent them from crumbling to internal chaos in the long run as he had seen many a time during his endless journey with them. Whether the later parts were mosaic and documentaries remains irrelevant thus far. 

I have wondered often if he was just too high, either on a psychotropic substance used commonly in the desert or had just inhaled a lot of smoke at a burning valley. But then with or without them, who or what guided him and strengthened him? Who was the force behind all the miracles he showed a whole nation? Were they real at all?!

If Yahweh, or in the plurality that the church speaks of 'Elohim' is 'the breath of life', a determined man who feels guided from within and grows immensely stronger in conviction and influence because of the guidance is indeed a work of God. He was the miracle among many of Yahweh, a burning bush within a man. Only, the man was burning with desire for emancipation of his family and his people. Which resulted in a work that for them was  'Life's' wonder. A blessing of the- 'Yah'..'weh'.