Religions of the Middle East notes from class on Wednesday 10/02/02.

The class started out with Prof. Borrowdale giving a brief explanation of the tower of Babel story, we went over most of this in class Monday. There are a few different reasons Yahweh halts the building of the tower of Babel, one reason is because human beings are challenging to be like God. He states "now nothing will be impossible for them to do." It seems as if God doesn’t want the people working together towards a specific common cause. (maybe because we might get to strong?). That is all we discussed on this story.
Gen. 27 Esau gets tricked out of his birthright for a bowl of soup. Jacob (his brother) is making soup, and Esau comes in tired after hunting while Jacob is making soup, so Jacob bribes Esau with this for his birthright, and Esau foolishly agrees. Jacob also tricks their father, Isaac into getting Esau’s blessing to be the next patriarch. Jacob is the "mama’s boy" and she helps him with this trick. He dresses up in clothes to make him feel like Esau (hairy). Jacob wanted to be #1, leader of the tribe, and with this birthright he gets more inheritance.
Gen 32:24- Jacob’s name is changed to Israel
We are now required to read Exodus, which as not on our assignment page.
EX 3:13 - God’s name introduced
EX 12 - the Passover
EX 15:11- Other God’s
EX 20 - 10 commandments
We had a brief summary of Exodus although; Exodus means the departure of the people of Israel from Egypt. The departure from Egypt is important becomes God brought them out of Egypt, and if he hadn’t they would still be enslaved there. Jacob has 12 sons, that become the 12 tribes of Israel & Israel becomes the mighty nation. Pharaoh orders male Hebrew babies killed. Moses’ mom floats Moses down the Nile river to save him, and the Pharaoh’s daughter finds him while she is bathing and adopts him. The Pharaoh’s daughter tries to find an milk maid, and with the help of Miriam she finds one, which happens to be Moses’ real mom, so Moses is raised by a Hebrew & Egyptian. When Moses grows older he kills an Egyptian because he was beating a Hebrew slave and is caught, so he runs off to the wilderness so he won’t be tried of this case and he gets married and settles down. Also in Exodus it speaks of God sending the 10 plagues, and the last of the plagues is #10- Angel of death, which kills the 1st born of each family. Hebrews are told through Moses that they need to kill a lamb & put the blood on their doorstep, and if they do this the angel of death will pass over their household. The "Passover" stems from this. The Passover is the celebration of freedom slavery in Egypt. The Passover is still celebrated widely today in Judaism.