Tag Archives: Moses

Running into the Fire

By Robin Bates | Published: January 18, 2025

Oliver and Whyte have poems about running toward fire, an unsettling metaphor during this fire season but thematically sound.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Fire in the Earth", "Fire", David Whyte, John the Baptist, Mary Oliver | Comments closed

Milton on the Ten Commandments

By Robin Bates | Published: October 3, 2020

In Milton’s view of Moses, the law he receives is a temporary measure, ultimately to be superseded by divine grace.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged John Milton, Law and Faith, Paradise Lost, Ten Commandments | Comments closed

The Bloody Flesh Our Only Food

By Robin Bates | Published: March 30, 2018

I share a Good Friday poem by T. S. Eliot and a Passover poem by Norman Finkelstein.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "East Coker", "Passover", "Telling", eucharist, Good Friday, Jesus, Norman Finkelstein, T. S. Eliot | Comments closed

A Positive Spin on the Golden Calf

By Robin Bates | Published: October 15, 2017

Rabbi Jacob Staub’s account of the golden calf is much different, and a lot more fun, than the Exodus version.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Golden Calf", Exodus, fertility religions, Freud, Jacob Staub, monotheism, Moses and Monotheism, Oedipus complex, polytheism, Repression | Comments closed

A Cradle Yet Shall Save the Earth

By Robin Bates | Published: August 27, 2017

Mark Twain has fun in “Huckleberry Finn” with today’s New Testament reading, which is about Moses being discovered in “the bushrushers.” Victor Hugo also has a charming poem about the incident.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Moses on the Nile", Exodus, Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain, Victor Hugo | Comments closed

The Joads & Steinbeck’s Lenten Message

By Robin Bates | Published: February 27, 2016

“The Grapes of Wrath” has a Lenten message with the Joad family lost in the wilderness, led by the Moses/Jesus figure Jim Casy. After Casy is killed, Tom Joad becomes the apostle who takes his vision of a transcendent humankind to the wider world.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Bible, burning bush, Exodus, Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck | Comments closed

What in Me Is Dark Illumine

By Robin Bates | Published: January 9, 2016

An epiphany is the moment when something divine enters the human realm. During the Epiphany season, Christians celebrate such moments. In the famous opening of “Paradise Lost,” Milton notes that the Holy Spirit is his muse and connects his own inspiration with a number of famous visitations of the Holy Spirit throughout Biblical history.