Understanding the Difference Between Real and True in the Bible | A Christian Witch Talks Theology
- Sara Raztresen
- 4 hours ago
- 7 min read
Because they're not the same thing.
"Moses never existed?!"
Oh, boy.
It was another Sunday night at my parents' dinner table where I dropped a bombshell idea: historians have no concrete archaeological or anthropological evidence to assume that Moses of Exodus was one single, real person. There are plenty of apologists doing some classic Bible math, and there are plenty of extremely shaky "question mark" items that just don't line up at all with the Bible math (the chronology) a lot of scholars/apologists put down, but the reality is that scholars generally don't have any concrete, specific evidence of the story as it's told in Exodus. Of course, some folks will argue that "not having evidence doesn't mean something hasn't happened," and this is technically true—but it's also a logical fallacy. You can say it about anything. We don't have evidence that the cosmos weren't built by special celestial aliens made of cotton candy and rainbows, after all—so it could be possible!
You see how that sounds. The burden of proof is on those who make a claim, and while it is technically true that maybe we just haven't found that one piece of evidence that'll end our doubts forever, the fact is that when we don't have evidence of something, it doesn't mean it's impossible to have happened; it just means we have no reason to believe it did happen.
There are a lot of theories that explain this wild discrepancy. Maybe there was a general story of what was “'at best a refracted folk memory of earlier expulsions of Levantine people' following the reconquest of the Nile delta by the Egyptian king Ahmose around 1530BC," according to the Disney professor of archaeology at Cambridge University.¹ That's certainly one idea. Knowing how the stories of many a Christian Saint or other folk hero has been twisted and messed up even within a couple centuries (centuries where writing was significantly easier than the Early Bronze Age in the Levant), it makes sense why people would conclude that the Moses of Exodus was more a folk hero, or perhaps an amalgamation of many people who led similar revolts and revolutions among the early Hebrews, than any one person. I can certainly rock with that idea; that makes all the sense in the world to me, especially after seeing it happen to those like St. Patrick, St. Valentine, and so many more.
However, my mom took this especially hard, and over the course of a four hour discussion with my parents, they both made one point very clear: all their lives, they were told the stories of the Bible weren't just true, but real—as in, literally true. Hard historical fact. Other religions with their mythology never crossed their mind because they never believed in it anyway, and even if they logically knew that the story of Genesis and Adam and Eve made no logical sense (and even broke down by its own logic once Cain, one of allegedly three people left in the world, managed to find a wife that wasn't his own mother Eve), the idea that everything past that could be in question was faith shattering—at least at first.
By the end, my parents and I came to what I was trying to express: the difference between real (as in, literally true, historically verified, actual events that have happened on earth), and true (as in, something that explains some truth about us as people, as tribes, about the world we live in, etc.). That last part is the important part, because when we stop reading the Bible like a 100% legitimate historical document and instead like all the things it actually is—a mix of folklore, history, mystical truth, spiritual gnosis, metaphor, etc.—we can better grasp what this book is actually trying to impart to us.
To further drive this point home, I'll take this quote from that article I referenced earlier, with the Cambridge professor, because I do think it hits right to the heart of what I'm saying:
Since the central rite of Jewish identity is the Passover festival, which commemorates the moment that Moses freed his people from slavery in Egypt, the absence of evidence outside the Bible story is potentially embarrassing, says Rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner, who leads Reform Judaism in this country: “When I heard for the first time that the exodus might not have happened, I did want to weep … then I thought, what does this matter? You have to distinguish between truth and historicity." ²
Truth and historicity. Truth and the real. That's what we have to get at with this Bible thing we all got, and that's what we're here to figure out: how do we tell what is still useful and true even if it isn't 100% historically real? How do we say, like Rabbi Laura, so what if it didn't literally happen?
Now, my friend, you're asking questions like a mystic—so let me tell you what this old mystic/Witch/theurge/theologian has to say.
What Differentiating Between Real and True in the Bible Does for Me
Later on in that article, Rabbi Janner-Klausner says this, which is the overarching question we must ask ourselves of everything in the Bible:
The question I ask of the story is: is there enduring truth that will move me, move the people I’m involved with, and give them liberation? Yes.³
That enduring truth is something that I seek when I look into the story of the Bible and the many figures in it. I've spoken about this in different ways many times, like in how I read the Bible as a "blend of myth and history," and how I don't take it literally. I've also made YouTube videos on ideas like this relating to witchcraft—about how my being a fantasy writer helps with magic, and how treating tarot like literary analysis makes for a richer understanding of the cards I pull. It should come as no shock to people that, as a writer of stories that have patently not happened, yet still touch on core truths, I would look at the Bible this way, too: as one that, while certainly at some times chronicles the real history of a people in the lens of the religion of that people, also shows off the triumphs of folk and figurative heroes whose genuine existence doesn't matter so much as the concepts, ideals, and initiatives they portray.
It's why we study fiction at all, and why those who have gone to school and gotten English and literature degrees, like I have, dissect and analyze that fiction so deeply, talking about it as if it is real. When we talk about the actions of Jay Gatsby in The Great Gatsby, we don't sit there saying "this obviously fictional representation of XYZ was written to have done XYZ," no! We speak about Gatsby as if he is a real, breathing person that existed somewhere once—and God knows Gatsby has lived, has existed, in so many people around Fitzgerald at that time in history, which sparked his motivation and inspiration to write it to begin with! Perhaps details were overblown, like the lavishness of the parties, the depth of the depravity around money—but are these not truths? The idea that money corrupts, and that people thing they can use money to obtain what they want, even people? And even at the expense of those people?
The real is not Gatsby as the one single person. The real is the scene, the backdrop of 1920s prohibition era, post-WWI catastrophe warping people's sense of reasonable behavior. But the truth is Gatsby's rise and Gatsby's downfall: the truth is that money cannot solve these problems of our hearts, and trying to force it to will ruin us.
As my parents and I got deep enough into the conversation to warrant a second round of drinks, the dinner plates long since emptied of my mother's shrimp scampi, I brought them an example of what I meant: the Book of Judges. Did any of these people literally exist? Did any of these battles literally happen? Did any of these enemies, like Sisera, really die? Did the Israelites really forget their covenant with God exactly every eight years, like clockwork?
WHO CARES?
What there is in Judges is a truth: in that eight year cycle, we see the blossoming, existing, rotting, and destruction of people, nations, cities, ideas, and convictions. We also see this truth in the way fruit grows: the beautiful flower, the tight-skinned fruit, and then the wrinkles, the mealiness, the blue fuzz of mold, the sickly sweet, rotten juice, the decay of that fruit into the ground as it becomes no good to eat, and then the nutrients flowing into the earth to empower the next bloom on the tree. A never-ending cycle of birth, life, death, and recycling. This is a truth, and the Bible shows it to us in its stories of those who have come before us.
When I fully come to terms with this, I find myself between a state of gnosticism and agnosticism. It isn't that I don't believe in God, or the truths of the Bible—but it also isn't that I take it all at face value. My faith in God is not destroyed by the idea that these things did not literally happen, because I know they metaphorically, mystically happened—and are still happening. When I think of it that way, then looking into the Bible for wisdom to survive the times we find ourselves in means I am not simply looking at an example of a similar event, but for a cosmic truth that events like the one's we're living through right now are a part of the cycles the Bible lays out, and that I can anticipate their endings so clearly one could accuse me of divining the future. It's because I recognize the cycles, the patterns, in these "events" of the Bible that I can sit in these spaces and be calm and know that my God is God.
And that's where I ended with my parents, too. My mom, for all her shock about Moses, still ended with the conclusion that she believes in God. And my dad, for all the back-and-forth we did, still believes in Love—which is God, and mayhaps the most integral part of God. We still hold these truths close, and we know we need truths more than we need anything to be concrete, fact, provable (so that we might hold it over others' heads, as so many Biblical literalists want so desperately to do).
So that's how I see these things. That's how it makes sense to me. And I hope it can make sense this way for you, too.
Notes
¹ Andrew Brown, "Man versus myth: does it matter if the Moses story is based on fact?," The Guardian, Nov. 29, 2014, https://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/nov/30/moses-man-versus-myth-ridley-scott.
² Ibid.
³ Ibid.
Sara Raztresen is a Slovene-American writer, screenwriter, and Christian witch. Her fantasy works draw heavily on the wisdom she gathers from her own personal and spiritual experience, and her spiritual practice borrows much of the whimsy and wonder that modern society has relegated to fairy-and-folktale. Her goal is to help people regain their spiritual footing and discover God through a new (yet old) lens of mysticism.
Comments