What impoverished soul would read an exalted hymn like Genesis 1 as a science project from a biology lab? What desperation leads men to regard the profound psychological symbols of Adam and Eve as actual events? How did we mistake those sublime allegories of the mystical journey, the stories of Joseph and Moses, for history?
Reading the Bible as history leads to war. Reading the Bible as symbol leads to wisdom. Some criticize the Bible as 'mere mythology.' That is no criticism. Scripture was intended as mythology. It may utilize some historical places and events, just as Shakespeare used bits of history in his plays; but Shakespeare's plays make no claim to be historically accurate, nor are they discredited because they didn't really happen. As the Jewish philosopher, Martin Buber, wrote: 'All great stories are true. Some actually happen, and some don't.' Creative authors have always transformed historical events into symbols of the soul, and physical landscapes into landscapes of the inner journey.
Myths are truer than facts. Facts happen once and vanish. Myths are the eternally recurring patterns of consciousness, expressed as stories. In mythical stories, each of us is hero and villain, savior and devil. The journey from Egypt through the desert to the Promised Land is our journey from the bondage of ignorence to the freedom of enlightenment. The central event in this journey is the mountain top, where we see divine fire and hear the Name revealed. This is no earthly mountain to be claimed with a national flag, but the peak experience of transcendental awareness, where Inward Light arises, and we hear the 'I Am' of Spirit as the 'So'Ham' of our own breath.
Yes, there may have been a desert shaman named Moses, a seer named Elijah, a tribal chieftain named Jacob. But what are they now? They are symbols. 'Isra-el' means, 'He has wrestled with God.' Originally, Israel was not a nation state but a state of consciousness, the state of one who wrestled with God and awakened to the Presence.
The name Israel was first given to Jacob, a dishonest, conniving, intensely selfish figure, after he wrestled with Spirit at the fording of the river Jordon. At first, this spirit seemed a dark and frightening energy, like one of the fierce water demons believed to inhabit such places. But with the dawn the spirit revealed itself to be the angel of God. Jacob won, but not before he received a wound from which he must limp forever.
What do we do with such a story? There really is a river Jordon. But we don't know if there ever was a Jacob, or if he had such an experience. As historical event, all we can say about this story, or any Bible story, is not that it is true or false, but that it is impossible to verify. How relevant can 'history' be if it cannot be verified? And besides, it's over.
Yet as spiritual allegory, the story of Jacob is profound. Whether or not it actually happened is irrelevant. It is the story of each deeply-flawed ordinary person who confronts the shadow, enters the stream of awakening, and crosses over to the land of Presence, forever changed, carrying his wounded humanity toward divine awareness with a new name, Israel, 'he has wrestled with God.'
Another story - Elijah - is hardly historical, yet profoundly true. Fleeing to a mountain cave, deeply dejected, Elijah encounters Presence, not through external experiences of fire or wind or earthquake, but through a 'still small voice' within. The Hebrew here is eloquent: 'Qol d'mama daqa,' literally 'the whisper of finely ground-up silence.' This is a description of the quantum field, where the finest particles of our reality arise from the inner silence of creative intelligence. Elijah, like the Buddha, the first Quaker, George Fox, and modern teachers such as Eckhart Tolle, went through a period of depression, and came out the other side fully awake.
Doubtless there was a real Mary, mother of a real rabbi named Jesus. But the 'Virgin Birth,' both here and in the story of Buddha, is allegorical. It represents the pure silence within us, where the Christ-light, or Buddhic Prajna, is born.
The myths of ancient scripture represent, in stunning dramatic detail, those subtle conflicts and ambiguities of our evolving soul that are so perplexing to talk about in the abstract. Therefor, we talk about them in signs. Scripture makes these Mysteries more concrete. Through the stark imagery of the Bible, we get something chewy, something salty, to flavor our dialog on the spiritual journey, so we don't have to bore each other with tedious over-intellectualizing. We live our lives as stories, not essays.
May you cross the desert and the waters, to find the land that flows with milk and honey inside you. May you climb the mountain at the center of your soul, and find peace. Enjoy the journey, especially when its plot gets spicy.
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