Re-Reading the

Bible
for the Other
BH 445

NBTS, Spring 2008

Prof. Charles Rix
Who are
they?
Are you a refugee?

Have you been translated?

Are you playing a role?

Who has constructed you?

 Reading Right to left
• NRS
Exodus 32:1 When the people
saw that Moses delayed to come
down from the mountain, the
people gathered around Aaron,
and said to him, "Come, make
gods for us, who shall go before
us; as for this Moses, the man
who brought us up out of the
land of Egypt, we do not know
what has become of him."
 Reading Right to left
• NRS
Exodus 32:1 When the people
saw that Moses delayed to come
down from the mountain, the
people gathered around Aaron,
and said to him, "Come, make
gods for us, who shall go before
us; as for this Moses, the man
who brought us up out of the
land of Egypt, we do not know
what has become of him."
 Reading Right to left
• NRS
Exodus 32:1 When the people
saw that Moses delayed to come
down from the mountain, the
people gathered around Aaron,
and said to him, "Come, make
gods for us, who shall go before
us; as for this Moses, the man
who brought us up out of the
land of Egypt, we do not know
what has become of him."
 Who are “the people?”
• NRS
Exodus 32:1 When the people
saw that Moses delayed to come
down from the mountain, the
people gathered around Aaron,
and said to him, "Come, make
gods for us, who shall go before
us; as for this Moses, the man
who brought us up out of the
land of Egypt, we do not know
what has become of him."
 Who are “the people?”
NRS
Exodus 32:1 When the people saw that
Moses delayed to come down from the
mountain, the people gathered around
Aaron, and said to him, "Come, make gods
for us, who shall go before us; as for this
Moses, the man who brought us up out of
the land of Egypt, we do not know what has
become of him."
NRS
Exodus 32:1 When the people
saw that Moses delayed to
come down from the
mountain, the people gathered
around Aaron, and said to him,
"Come, make gods for us, who
shall go before us; as for this
Moses, the man who brought
us up out of the land of Egypt,
we do not know what has
become of him."
 A Post-Holocaust
Reading Sensitivity
Why “re-Read” after the
Holocaust?
Re-Reading the Jewish Bible
after Auschwitz

Auschwitz begins whenever

someone
“
looks at a slaughterhouse
and thinks:
“They’re only animals.”
 Re-Reading After Auschwitz
The history of a people that almost “was
not”
-Emile Fackenheim
Hovering” between:
“we will do and we will hear”
and
being “vexed” and “defiant”

The incident at Marah

(Exod 15:22-24)
The incident at Massah and Meribah
(Exod 17:1-3)
 No
wate
r

“
Memorial
Samuel Bak (1986)