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The account of the Exodus of Israel out of Egypt, led by Moses, has shaped the theology and community identity of both Jews and Christians across centuries, blossoming further in later scriptures and religious writings as well as in art and music. Join us as we speak with Joshua Coates about the book, Let My People Go, the reception of Exodus, motifs in Jewish and Christian literature. This volume brings together an international group of scholars to explore the reuse of the Exodus narratives across a wide range of early Jewish and Christian literature, including the Apocrypha and the New Testament. You're listening to New Books and Biblical Studies, a channel of the New Books Network, and I'm your host, Michael Morales.
Dr. Joshua Coates is Assistant Professor of New Testament at Providence Theological Seminary. He completed a PhD at the University of Edinburgh in 2016. His most recent publication, The Divine Name in the Gospel of John, was published in 2017 by Morsebic.
Joshua, welcome back to New Books and Biblical Studies. Thanks for having me. Now, though we've had you on the NBN before, let's go ahead and introduce you afresh. Would you tell us more about yourself and your scholarship?
Sure, so I'm a teaching testament at Providence Theological Seminary, which is in Southern Manitoba, right in the middle of Canada. And my scholarly interests have kind of circled around a number of interrelated aspects. I'm really fascinated with the use of scripture in the New Testament, and particularly in the Gospels. So my interest of kind of found themselves at Snack and Milk at the Gospel of John, and while I'm working on scripture in John.
But my problem is I'm interested in lots of other things. So I found myself dipping into 2nd and 3rd century Christian reception of New Testament texts recently, and issues to do with the logical interpretation and their textuality, a lot of which come out of the questions to do with how scripture gets used in the New Testament. So lots of interrelated things. But Gospels, scripture, Jesus, I'm in.
We're looking at the volume called Let My People Go, the reception of Exodus motifs in Jewish and Christian literature. Joshua, give us the story behind this book. How did it come together? Yeah, well, I came to know the editors, co-editors of the Volumes in Daugherty and the piano calls to teach, respectively, in the UK and in Germany, got to know them through a delightful seminar that's on the Old Testament in the New Testament, having this annually in Gladstone's library and hearted in Wales.
And so there is a kind of a shared interest there in reception of scripture. They put this together, this proposal for reception of Exodus motifs, and it brought together a team of scholars from largely European scholars, and not exclusively, but to explore various ways in which Exodus motifs get reflected in scripture in 2nd century Polish-Jewish texts. I think initially the vision for the volume was to go beyond that, but it ended up basically ending with New Testament. We were going to have a conference gathering the preliminary papers and it was going to be in Germany in March of 2019.
We all know what happened in that month. That was just a report that he was going to fly when the plug was pulled on that conference. So still hopes of us getting together maybe this next year, just to retrospectively look back on what we have accomplished, but of course, not the impetus for that is a little bit less when the book's already in print. So that was some of the impetus for some of the beginnings of the project.
I suppose the volume is participating in what is a relatively recent cover to biblical studies in terms of its focus on reception history. The reception of Exodus motifs in an older generation would have been looked at Old Testament and New Testament, for example, but there's an increasing recognition that Israel's scriptures are already dealing dialogue with each other. Other Jewish texts are engaging with Israel's scriptures in ways that are comparable to New Testament. You see it also in the later rabbinic tradition.
So if this other work has been done on, say, Exodus and New Testament, that's not a new thing, but this is broadening it to a broader purview, I suppose. And I think that focus on reception history may be and health is more towards the layers of tradition. So my contribution is looking at the anti-matrixor, rather than just isolating a conversation between, say, acts of the book of Exodus and the gospel of John to recognize that all sorts of intermediary participants in that conversation. And this is a growing field.
It's this evidence by a new commentary series in the journal of Bible and its reception. So that's some of the framing I suppose for the volume. Joshua, would you explain for us the importance of the Exodus account in its variety of motifs in Jewish and Christian literature? Well, it can't really understate our overstate significance of Exodus, whereas real scripture and beyond really.
I mean, if we go beyond the scriptures themselves, the image of liberation of oppressed peoples has all sorts of resonance in our own time at displaced peoples and all sorts of different kinds of slavery that happened today. And that was maybe some of the original framing of the volume too, some of the resonances that may have in our current context. But the Exodus, the Book of Exodus, of course, is the kind of codified account or official account version of a foundational moment in Israel's formation as a people in covenant relation with God. But the motifs in the Book of Exodus and Exodus motifs take us beyond the book itself.
So you have lots of wrestling and engagement with and extrapolation upon the themes that have taken your formulation in the Book of Exodus beyond the Book of Exodus, even within Israel scripture. So some of those big themes would be God delivering his people, of course, from hardship in Egypt. And in doing so, revealing his own character, they're not just liberated to do their own thing, but liberated to be in covenant relationship with the God who they know something about. You know, God who's sovereign over the gods of Egypt, who is faithful to promising me to Abraham.
So it's almost as much of not more about the disclosure of God than it is about his people out of bondage and providing for them in the process. They come out plundering the Egyptians, their fed and watered in the desert. So he's a God who follows through and is probably doesn't just abandon them at the edge of the Red Sea or Red Sea. So some of those themes, and of course, I can add to that, of course, making the covenant, the striking of the covenant at Sinai, where you have a legal code laid out and then the book culminating in the construction of the place of worship, where covenant relationship with God is going to be constantly refreshed and renewed.
So those are the themes within the book, but of course, those are foundational to Israel's identity and they pop up all over Israel's structures. Maybe most obviously, you know, the legal code in Exodus gets represented in Deuteronomy, of course, it's engaged throughout the prophets. You know, you were in covenant relation with God. You broke the covenant.
So this is what you can expect based on promises and blessings and curses and Deuteronomy is a countable legal code, for example, the motif of deliverance and calling out people from oppression. I mean, in a way, that is not the first time that has happened. In the book of Exodus, you've got Abraham being called out of her and when he goes back to Egypt with Sarah, because of famine and then Sarah is almost imprisoned and only delivered because of the plague that strikes the Egyptians and then Abraham comes out of Egypt, you know, wealthier than he went into it. This interesting dialogue happening there between the Exodus accounts.
And that's going to, that sort of experience of God delivering, bringing out from Egypt in particular, will be then foundational in the hopes of Israel later on, when they end up in exile in Babylon and can anticipate that because they're in covenant relation with God, he is going to do something similar analogous to what he did and bringing them out of Egypt. So you see this throughout the prophets, maybe especially in the latter half of Isaiah, where there's a strong expectation of a new Exodus or a second Exodus, which that point will be a return from exile. So you have throughout the Old Testament or Israel scriptures, you know, as we're looking back in memory to this event, you see this in the Psalms, for instance, in Psalm 77, I brought you up with a strong arm reminiscing on how when they approached to see the waters saw him, the ochle, and they writhed this recalling of an event in the past. But then in texts like, like in Isaiah, is all looking forward, you know, when you pass through the waters, I will be with you.
So in anticipation of a future deliverance that echoes and draws on imagery and language from the first Exodus. So that's kind of Exodus, the deliverance aspect or deliverance motif. But I mentioned also a hugely important aspect of the book of Exodus is the disclosure of the Yahweh, its revelation and Yahweh, being the name that is associated with his covenant making and revealed to Moses in the during Bush and on the next verse three, of course, the disclosure of God to his people in action is fundamental to the whole structure. But this is a key foundational moment in which God reveals himself and reveals himself as a God who is known in his action in the history.
So God reveals his name, your mind the Lord to Moses that is picked up and repeated throughout the book of Exodus as God follows through in his promise. So I can say to the Israelites, you know, I will do this or I'll send plagues in the Egyptians and then they will know that I am the Lord that phrase, you know, occurs throughout the book of Exodus. The many culminates in the second Sinai of the off-name when Moses asks to see God's glory and he says, well, you can't see my glory, but you can see I'll declare my name to you, the Lord gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abandon in love. And he declares that at the very moment that he's about to exercise mercy and grace and compassion with the people who are worshiping a golden calf with foot of the mountain.
So he's not just declaring this is what I'm like. He's actually acting it up the moment that he's giving a second chance rewriting of the tablets that were broken. That disclosure of God as being a God who's greater than Egyptian gods, God who's gracious and compassionate is picked up and repeated, recurs throughout Israel's scriptures. And some of the phrasing and the terminology is deliberately evoked.
So, you know, the phrase, you know, gracious and compassionate God's self disclosure and excess 34 is all over Israel's scripture to see it in Psalm, to see it in the Amiah's appeal to God, you know, you're a God who's gracious and compassionate, you're a bounding in love. You are longing to forgive the Amiah says he appeals to the character of God revealed in Exodus and anticipating an anticipation of God acting in a way that is now the style he's done in the past. So that is a hugely and I'm not focused on the way there is a rallying point for the revelation of God. There's other ways in which that is expressed.
I mean, the name Yahweh tied to God's other self disclosure in Exodus three. I am is similarly picked up in Isaiah, but refrained a little bit. So, Isaiah is depicting or the prophet in Isaiah, took cover 43 45 and other places is looking forward to God inaugurating a second exit. So you have God making statements, the repeated statement, I am he which sets him in opposition to a distinction from Babylonian gods, the idols that Israel is tempted to worship.
So it functions to set him apart exclusively, which is not the similar to the way in which God is distinguished from the Egyptian powers and deities, but it's again God revealing what he is like, he is not like other gods that he does not share his name or his glory with anybody else. And therefore, he warrants the exclusive allegiance that is covered people. So those are a few examples of motifs in Exodus and how they get played out in within Israel's scriptures, but maybe beyond this real scriptures in the second temple period and the New Testament. More broadly, you have a huge emphasis on on access, maybe just a little indication of that would be in a camarama by 18 manuscripts of Exodus, which gives an indication of how extensively was being studied and you know, commentaries being written on text that are expansions upon in Exodus in various apocryphal and see the picture full books, you have different kinds of engaging with Exodus, whether it's citation or commentary, or some cases like a rewriting book of Jubilees, for instance, as a kind of rewriting of Genesis and Exodus.
But interesting that the book of Jubilees is framed as occurring or being delivered to Moses on Mount Sinai in Exodus 24, I think it is. So you have the sense that Jubilees is almost setting forth its own content as some ways on par or harnessing the rhetorical significance of Exodus and God's revelation of Moses on the mountain as a way of harnessing some of that rhetorical power, but also legitimating the people who would read and orient themselves to the content of the book of Jubilees. And so in terms of uses of Exodus in that sort of way, Josephus is another example of Jesus, and heages into retells the story of Exodus and reframes Moses as a kind of Hellenistic, virtuous leader, perhaps with an apologetic, you know, intense mind there. So that's a second sample more broadly, and of course, it's all of the excess of lots of work and done on this special in the Gospels in the ways in which Jesus is inaugurating the new Exodus that Isaiah is looking forward to.
Matthew's birth account echoing Moses' birth account in lots of ways. Jesus cast out demons, he marks gospel by the finger of God, maybe an illusion to the Egyptians over against Moses who plays in Moses are executed by the finger of God. And of course, Jesus is the last supper. This is my blood of new covenant which evokes and kicks over in the first covenant institution established in Exodus 24, and the blood is sprinkled over over the people.
It's all over implicitly and explicitly, the synoptic Gospels and right through to the end of the intestine revelations saturated with Exodus themes, you've got plagues that are largely evoking Exodus plagues, the admonition to the saints to come out of Babylon and an echo of Israel coming out of Egypt. So hopefully that illustrates how deeply pervasive the motifs are, how significant this text is and how really so much assumes it and is built off it and is receiving and also reframing it in light of current circumstances that various authors had facing them. Now in this volume you wrote a chapter called Revelation, Provision and Deliverance, the reception of Exodus and Johannine literature. Can you give us a summary of your contribution?
So my contribution is focused on the Gospel of John and the Epistles. The Epistles come into it very faintly because, well they're shorter but they also don't engage nearly as explicitly with the scripture, so the imprint of scripture is much fainter. And that maybe flags up one of the challenges that I had with the Gospel of John is he's thoroughly engaging with scripture and with Exodus, but he tends to be more lucid and is engaged in with scripture and very synthetic in his thoughts. So how do you methodologically identify where this is, you know, Exodus or just something that's in the air that, how do you be precise.
So the way I went about my, my essay was to identify three really clear or at least clear to me points of engagement with the book of Exodus as a starting point for thinking through the motif, the chapter's motif that John is engaged with. So the three points of engagement that I identified, the first is at the end of the prologue, where John exalts that the word he can flesh and we be held as glory, the glory of the only God of the Father, full of grace and truth. And he goes on to contrast the revelation that comes through Jesus with Moses and then concludes the prologue saying no one has ever seen God, but the one and only has made him known. The most balanced scholars are agreed there's significant engagement with Exodus 33 and 34 here where Moses similarly asks show me your glory and God's as you can see my glory I'll just reveal my name to you, which is gracious and compassionate, gracious and compassionate.
Grace and truth are our john's grace and truth is almost certainly an application of that exposition of the name there. And the fact that john's as we get to see is glory that Moses didn't get to see. So that was the first point of engagement. The second is in john six where you have Jesus feeding narrative and then the extended discourse on the bread of life, the booking God's feeding of his people with man in the desert.
And then the third one is Jesus's Chris fiction when there's a quotation from Exodus 12 that none of his bones are broken, linking Jesus with the Passover lamb. So I started with those and focus on those three clear points of engagement to avoid some of the more speculative attempts have been made to think about john in relation to Exodus. Just as an example where sometimes this can go because john can be a bit of a hunting ground for technology and illusion and whatnot. One scholar in the middle of 20th century who suggested that when Jesus is crucified between two thieves that's a voking the fact that Moses had his arms up raised by a couple of friends who are holding his hands up so they could win the battle.
Maybe that seemed a little bit of a stretch so how do you, what about the boundaries there. And yet, although I want to start with kind of clear points engage you want to recognize that that's just the tip of the iceberg so john is engaging with these Exodus motifs in other places in this gospel. And he's almost certainly engaging with other Exodus passes or motifs in his gospel so this is not exhaustive. The other thing I tried to stress in a draw out in my essay contributing to a volume on the reception of Exodus motifs is the way in which john is engaging with Exodus in mediated form.
So those three points of engagement, all three of them I think were likely suggested to john by prior Jesus tradition that we have in this and objects and I'll certainly john I think knows Mark's gospel for example, mark me stimulated some of these engagements with Exodus you have a feeding narrative. The Passover Jesus connection with a pastor that's already there in marks gospel so john is moving in within a tradition here and that going back to some of the things that Jesus himself I think. So the dots Jesus himself connects the transfiguration account in mark and and Luke also is may well be a foundation for how john frames him in his program to be seen as glory. So it's stimulated by engaging with with mark or the Jesus tradition, but there's lots of indications that john is engaged directly with the text of Exodus himself some of the details he includes don't come from the gospels indications that he's engaging directly with Exodus.
And then he's engaging with Exodus in conversation with the interpretive tradition of Exodus that talked about a little bit already here. So there's an intervening interpretive tradition I was struck by high say in particular not exclusive but I think particular seems to be a lens to which john's reading access and that might be a two way conversation might be reading Isaiah and might have access to the end of my day I think john thinks of a whole scripture as a synthetic tapestry it's all interrelated with each other at the center of which is Jesus for john is thoroughly Christological and synthetic in his thought in the basis for his synthesis is his Christ. So what you're getting then in john's gospel is a kind of a concretizing of history interpretation of Exodus that is now being understood in light of Jesus event. So the three areas that I focused on I mentioned introduced briefly already, maybe I can say a little more about each of them, that'd be great.
So the prolonged john's gospel, you have the glory of God on display for john, which as I mentioned goes back to us engaging with Texas 33 and 34 and stimulated perhaps by transfiguration Cal in mark, and the other aspects of the gospels to for instance the marks gospel in Jesus is walking the water to his disciples he's described as about to pass by them which seems to evoke the glory of God passing by Moses when he's hiding the clutch of the rocks is already this kind of engaging with that. The often in the gospel tradition, but john just exacerbates this and he says we be held his glory and implies pretty strongly this is the glory that Moses couldn't see, which really underscores a significance more getting in the gospel john. We are getting wind of him the very heart of God that Moses long to see or as Peter says angel angels long to look into some of this. And how is john able to do that.
I think he sees a bit of legitimation for this striking presentation of Jesus in Isaiah so this interesting conversation between Exodus and Isaiah Moses can't see the glory. But in Isaiah six Isaiah's vision of God sitting on throne and he says I saw the Lord. Well john is gospel, leads to that passage in chapter 12 he says well Isaiah said this because he saw Jesus glory and he wrote about it. So why is it sees the glory that turns out to be Jesus gives a certain license to to understand what's going on in excess 33 and 34 so there's a re understanding of that passage.
And you see some of the ripples of this profound engagement with with access elsewhere from the gospel john to. So we can check it five for example Jesus opponents are accused by him never having seen God's form or heard his voice. And that's a an evoking of the Israelites to put him outside not who didn't were terrified of the voice and pleaded with Moses to go speak to God for us. Jesus exacerbates that to look you, you not even not only have not heard his voice but you haven't seen his form.
So there's this critique of Jesus opponents and the reason he can say that is because they rejected him they don't realize what they're looking at. If they had to recognize who he was and they would have heard voice of God and seen his, his form. And similarly when those when Philip in chapter 14 says to Jesus show us the father and that will be enough for us. That's a similar kind of question to Moses requests show me your glory.
And the language is actually similar to the sathu jib wording there and Jesus response. You know what you're seeing in front of you. You've seen me you have seen the father is the same kind of idea that we're getting in the prologue. No one has ever seen God but actually one and only has made him known.
So what we're getting in the gospel john and is the ultimate divine revelation that turns out to be Jesus. And it's not clear that john thinks of Jesus as necessarily a later or a sort of separate revelatory event. The way he sort of harnesses the evokes excess 33 and 34 in the prologue and even suggests that Jesus in some way unknowns to Moses at the time. It's actually the heart of that firstly often.
There's a bending of time in a way that these sort of moments are folded back on each other. And Jesus is the ultimate exposition of God's glory and of his name. So Jesus concludes in his prayer 2017. I have major name though.
That's what I've done. Of course, I am saying, so I'm john's gospel that are another way of articulating this. So that's the prologue. Maybe just for a second time, I'll just take a couple words about john's engagement with broken bones Jesus is the Passover.
So Exodus 12, of course, the first Passover. And the second one is not to be broken. And Jesus, the bones of the lamp, the Passover lamp is the meat that that meal Jesus in his crucifixion is described as his bones in broken. This, of course, is not unique or original to john you have in the synoptics already a Passover meal of sorts.
You just sit down to the last supper initially you don't have the supper in john. What you have are several repeat references to pass over throughout the gospel john, which indicates maybe that john is fairly digestivist meal and sprinkled it throughout the text of his gospel. So that's the way and john is clearly engaging directly with Exodus. He's got a quotation of the bones not being broken that you don't have in the synoptics as a reference to injuries his crucifixion to be given vinegar on his up which is what was used to spread the blood on the dark post and But as we saw in the prologue is engaged with Exodus is mediated by the intervening interpretive tradition so the wording no not one of his bones will be broken.
He's not exactly what you get in Exodus 12 it's actually more similar to Psalm 33 we have a similar phrase but in some 33 there's no Exodus framing the Exodus narrative is not actually imbued so john is as linguistically tried to pass just together something new that reflects the kind of synthesis of his thought that he's reading passages in light of each other and his whole presentation of Jesus as the Passover lamb. This is a strong suggestion and that his bones are not broken just like Passover lamb is not broken Jesus death occurs in john's gospel at the time the Passover lamb is being prepared so that's different from the synoptics. And of course john the back is points to Jesus as a lamb God he takes away the sin of the world. But the fact that he's the lamb he takes away the sin of the world brings Passover lamb in conversation with other lamb imagery sacrificial lamb imagery probably pointing to Isaiah 53 in particular where you have a lamb who slaughtered for for sent to take away sin.
So again you have john reading Exodus in light of something in Isaiah and the takeaway from it is that Jesus is presented as deliverance of the deliver from slavery to sin so Exodus ideas are recast in light of a deeper kind of enslavement. He's the verse towards that deliverance so he is the built an expression of God's character. He is the manna the bread that provides for the Israelites and the wilderness or his own people in the gospel and then he's the delivered a deeper kind of enslavement to the enslavement you get in the book of access. Now before letting you go Joshua what's on the horizon for you in terms of writing.
The horizon is a baby number two being born so that puts other life and are expecting our second set of writing projects a little bit more distant on the horizon but I'm working on a a an edited volume that's subtitle the formative power of scripture it's a collection of essays. The book is a collection of scholars reflecting on the scholarly vocation, the biblical studies for life as for the field of the scholars for others for the church for the world so really excited about about that. Doing some work on the vocalization of scripture in john so when scripture is spoken by characters within the narrative. The ways which john seems to be using that to disciple readers to themselves become those who inhabit narrative and the voice of scripture.
That's kind of early stages of that presented paper and conference last month on it and seeing where that's going to go so there are a couple things that are quiet and fire there. Joshua thank you for joining us it's been great hearing about these Exodus motifs and Jewish and Christian literature all the best. Thank you for having me friends you've been listening to new books and biblical studies a channel of the new books network until next time goodbye.