On The Idea That Moses And The Law Are "Too Jewish" For The United States

Tell my brothers to be always watching unto prayer and when the good old ship of Zion comes along, to be ready to step on board.

Harriet Tubman Letter to her family 1854  

Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live – a long life; longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. So I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord

Martin Luther King jr. Last Sermon

Here is what is shown online as Benjamin Franklin's proposed design for the front of a Great Seal for the United States depicting Pharaoh's army being destroyed as Moses follows God's instruction for closing the path through the Red Sea

 

 

 Here is Thomas Jefferson's design showing the Children of Israel running away to freedom from their enslavement by Pharaoh.  

 

 

There is an enormous irony in the fact that the very thing that the slave-owner Jefferson wanted to use to symbolize the United States is a constantly referred to event in the abolition movement at its most basic level, the Spirituals of those enslaved escaping slavery against the very law of the United States embedded into the Constitution and which was not eradicated by the Civil War, the abrubtly cancelled Reconstruction, the great Civil Rights struggle of the post-WWII era, the culmination in that of the abruptly cancelled Voting Rights and Civil Rights acts and the presidency of Barack Obama as we are still suffering under the Pharaonic regime of anti-democratic, anti-egalitarian features embedded in the Constitution for the protection of the slave holders and their progeny.  

If I had time I would list only some of the citations of The Law of Moses in the historical foundations of the United States, of the Exodus story, both the good and the bad of it.   Moses and that first event of slaves being freed from slavery is as American as  Harriet Tubman and Martin Luther King jr,  and even Franklin and Jefferson and they're just the start of it.  

After I wrote the first draft of this I checked out the news in several places, like I always do in the morning and I saw a piece by Thomas Reese at the National Catholic Reporter speculating on what the most Catholic President in our history, Joe Biden will talk about when he meets with Good Pope Francis tomorrow.   He made this observation:

The White House sees in the pope an ally on the world stage, although the pope is probably closer to Bernie Sanders than Biden on economic issues.

I would venture to say that Benedict XVI and even John Paul II, who I would never count as my favorite Popes, at least in their official writings are probably closer to Bernie than Biden because their theology is informed by the Mosaic Law as, in fact, the Gospels and Epistles are.  The Law is probably the most radical of all economic documents in human history, it makes Marxism pale in comparison in its radical egalitarianism, what Moses didn't explicitly equalize was equalized by both Jesus and Hillel in their abbreviation of The Law and the Prophets in their positive and "negative" expression of "The Golden Rule."   If those who claimed to follow those traditions obeyed that law there never would have been slavery among those who profess Christianity, there would never have been poverty or unequal treatment.   There is nothing more radical than that, every secular, ersatz substitute for that morality most assuredly included, including, unfortunately, most of what gets called "socialism." 

Moses is more American than apple pie.  "Mishpat" is a far better word for egalitarian representative government of, by and FOR The People than the entirely damaged word "democracy."  It has been used too often to mean unequal, non-representative gangster government.  Including some of the worst dictatorships of the 20th century.   "Democracy" is what the Republican-fascists are calling their ratfucking of electoral democracy even as I am typing this.  

Update:  Oh, and that 1 Samuel 8 passage I said was about the greatest warning against gangster government ever given.  It is so great that the big fat religion hater, Thomas Paine cited it positively, one of his primary historical testimonies in in his treatise against monarchy.