Bible Review

Some, but certainly not all, of this composite and simplified view is held by my friends and colleagues Marcus J. Borg and J. Dominic Crossan. But I am not here trying to describe their positions, which deserve, and to which I am giving, more detailed attention elsewhere. The phenomenon of which I speak is what I meet at the more popular level.

We know that this took place sometime during the early part of the 40th year since the great Spanish commentator Ibn Ezra (1092–1167) understands Numbers 20:1 to refer to the beginning of the 40th year of the Exodus.

Kamenetsky, Parshas Vayeilech, p. 1.

Mordechai Kamenetsky, Parshas Vayeilech, Project Genesis (http://torah.org/learning/drasha/5758/vayeilech.html) v. 4:51, p. 1.

As Jacob Milgrom (JPS Torah Commentary: Numbers [Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1990], p. 166) points out, the text reinforces that this action of Moses “was aggravated because it was witnessed by all of Israel.” Hence the punishment Moses receives.

This is one of the four cross-cultural characteristics of mystical experience, according to William James in The Varieties of Religious Experience (first published in 1902 and available in several editions), lecture 16.

John 14:6 also affirms that Jesus is “the truth and the life.” According to John, Jesus is the incarnation of all of these (and more).

This difference may reflect their different social classes: The Buddha was born into a wealthy ruling class, Jesus into an oppressed peasant class. As my colleague John Dominic Crossan has remarked, a passion for justice most commonly comes from the experience of injustice. A second factor is that Jesus stood in the tradition of Moses and the social prophets of Israel, all of them God-intoxicated voices of religious social protest.