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Sacred history is the retelling of history narratives "with the aim of instilling religious faith" regardless of whether or not the narratives are founded on fact.[1]
In the context of the Hebrew texts that form the basis ofJudaism, the term is used for all of the historical books of the Bible – i.e.,Books of Kings,Ezra–Nehemiah andBooks of Chronicles – spanning the period of the 10th to 5th centuries BC, and by extension also of the later books such asMaccabees and the books of theNew Testament. The term in this sense is used byThomas Ellwood inSacred history, or, the historical part of the holy scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, published 1709. Parts of theTorah, such as the story ofMoses andExodus, may have historical kernels, but they are highly embellished and difficult to reconstitute.[2]
"I prefer to understand theplagues and the broader narrative of the Exodus from Egypt as redemptive or sacred history. There is a historical kernel to the story, as Tigay notes, but this kernel was elaborated and embellished by generations ofIsraelites as they told and retold the story from generation to generation, first orally as afolk tale, then later in highly crafted literary documents that even later wereconflated into the biblical narrative we read today. The thrust of the entire narrative is our ancestors' conviction that Israel's Exodus from Egypt was part of God's redemptive work, the fulfillment ofGod's promise to our forefathers.
"Martin Buber puts it this way in his book titled "Moses." It may be impossible to reconstitute the course of the events themselves, he notes, but "it is nevertheless possible to recover much of the manner in which the participating people experienced those events. We become acquainted with the meeting between this people and a vast historical happening that overwhelmed it; we become conscious of the saga-creating ardor with which the people received the tremendous event and transmitted it to a moulding memory."
"Not "the events themselves," then, but "the manner in which the participating people experienced those events" is what we are reading in theseTorah portions from theBook of Shemot. And it is this version that continues to have such an impact on us when we recite the story annually at ourPassover seders, dipping our fingers into our wine in tribute to the suffering caused by the plagues".The Jewish Week Jan 27, 2006
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