The Genius of Moses

I suggested that David try to imagine how difficult it would be for someone who had been a slave in Egypt to be confronted with the idea of an invisible God. Their culture reflected the worship of Egyptian deities like the sun, the moon, birds, and beasts--deities who were worshipped on mountaintops and whose likenesses were portrayed in images... In stark contrast, here was a God who could only be seen in the mind's eye. His presence had to be experienced--felt--in order to be perceived. For Moses, the challenge of communicating such a radical theology would be a challenge to his remarkable ingenuity."" In his search to grasp the nature of God, John Redfield was struck by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel's claim that ""the prophets speak for God."" Redfield determined that if the prophets spoke for God, then--as a corollary--God could be defined as that which inspired the prophets. Since Moses was the foremost of the prophets and the first to opine that God is invisible, discovering how Moses considered God would shed significant light on the subject. The Genius of Moses is the result of an extensive study to get into the head of the leader of the exodus. While delving into this exploration, it becomes clear that Moses' process of communicating the concept of God to the Israelites was truly amazing. By creating perceptions of acts of radical amazement, Moses constructed a context in which the Israelites might feel the elusive presence of God. Follow Redfield's journey to Sinai, and you too might grasp through the senses what is hidden from the mind.