The Red Sea, and who were these people anyway?

Exodus 14

Welcome to the Daily Bible Chapter. My name is James Leroy Wilson and I invite you to join me as we discover new insights and new perspectives from a very old book.

EXODUS 14

I’m reading Young’s Literal Translation (YLT) and the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV).

Between reading Exodus 13 and 14 I read something else: Book II, Chapter 6 of Julian Jaynes’s The Origin of Consciousness and the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. The title is “The Moral Consciousness of the Khabiru.”

I hadn’t heard the name “Khabiru” before, but Jaynes claims it means “vagrant.” The K had been softened and “Hebrew” emerged. Using the cheat sheet called Wikipedia, I found out the “Habiru” were known throughout the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East from the 18th through 12th centuries BCE, people on the fringe who were nomads, outlaws, rebels, mercenaries and… slaves.

In my commentary on Genesis 43 I wrote:

One detail I didn’t recall is that while Joseph feasts with his brothers, the Egyptians ate separately, because to eat with the Hebrews was an “abomination.”

A brief Internet look-up suggests that “Hebrew” means people from “across the river” and refers to Eber, an ancestor of Abraham.