ROUGHLY EDITED COPY CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY EDUCATION NETWORK EXODUS DR. DAVID ADAMS #56 Captioning Provided By: Caption First, Inc. 10 E. 22nd Street Suite 304 Lombard, IL 60148 800-825-5234 *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. *** >> Is the tent of meeting described in Chapter 33 the same as the tent of meeting that is talked about in relation to the tabernacle? >> Well, this is another one of those perennial questions, Eric. And especially one that has troubled us in the last century. Because historical criticism has made a big deal of the fact that we have discussion of the tabernacle related to the tent of meeting. And then here in Chapter 33 we have a discussion of the tabernacle which seems to be different from that that we have with regard to the tent of meeting. So I think you're right that we need to look at this question in a little more detail. Well, let's compare these two, the tabernacle that we had described in Chapters 25 to 31 and then will get described again later in the book and the tent of meeting/tabernacle that we have -- and we'll call it the one here that we have in Chapter 32 the tent of meeting and the other one we'll call the tabernacle just to keep them straight. First the tent of meeting here in Chapter 3, where is it located? It is located outside the camp. Our text makes that very clear. That when the people want to inquire of the Lord, they go outside the camp to do so. Whereas the tabernacle is to be located inside the camp. In fact, at the center of the camp. What about comparing the structure itself? The tent of meeting is just a tent. You know, just apparently from the description a single tent. The tabernacle is more than a tent. It is a -- what we might think of as a temple like structure. It has a tent at the center of it. But it also has the fence around it. And it has the other elements that are part of the tabernacle complex. So it's not the same kind of structure as the tent of meeting, as well. Another way that we might compare these two is to ask what their purpose is. The purpose of the tent of meeting as described here in Chapter 32 is ***iracular. That is to say when Moses wants to talk with God or when an individual has a question they want to inquire about God from, they can come to the tent and seek an audience with God and, you know, have God hear their concerns and get a response. We're not told here exactly how this works. But it's clear that the function is one of communication primarily between God and Moses and the people. Whereas the function of the tabernacle is different. Its function is to have the organized worship, including later on we discover sacrifices, as well. So it has an altar and it has things like that that are not in the tent of meeting because they serve different functions, as well. Now, what about the relationship of the presence of God to these two things? Well, the presence of God in the tent of meeting is transitory. God doesn't dwell in the tent of meeting. We're told that when Moses goes there, that God would come down to meet with Moses there. And then at the end, God would leave again. So this is not a place where God dwells among his people. It is, as the name, suggests a place where they meet. However, in the tabernacle, the holy of holies in the tabernacle is a place where God's presence is permanently found among his people. So no one can go in there except -- ultimately as we later learn, except the high priest. And only on certain specified occasions. Because the presence of God there is so intense that the people would be destroyed if they were to come into the full unshielded presence of God. And finally, we can compare these two on the matter of sort of who -- who works there. That is to say: What are the attendants of these? In the tent of meeting the people who are engaged in working there we might say are Moses and Joshua, his assistant. Moses goes and Joshua apparently stays there all the time. He's the caretaker of the tent of meeting. And Moses, you know, comes there when he wants to inquire of the Lord or when he's seeking God's information for someone else. Whereas for the tabernacle, the attendants are not Moses and Joshua but the priests who are called to serve in the tabernacle. So if we compare what's said in the text about these two things, the tent of meaning and the tabernacle, we see they are really very different. They are different with regard to location. They are different with regard to the kind of structure they are. They are different with regard to their purpose. They are different with regard to the concept of how God is present in them. And they are different with regard to their attendants and who works among them. So what do we make then of these? Well, historical critics take the view, which you might expect by now, that what we have here are two different traditions that have gotten mixed together. That the tent of meeting belongs either for some critics to J, for others to E. Some even think it's kind of an independent floating tradition that we might call Tradition X that has sort of come into the text here. And they think that the tabernacle belongs to the P tradition. And what they think is that in the story these two just kind of got mixed together. That the editor put the two together and did it in kind of a sloppy way so it's easy to get confused about which one is being spoken of here. By the way, the reason the historical critics think that the tabernacle belongs to the P tradition is they think it never really existed in Moses' time at all. That it was merely an invention of the priesthood in the postexilic tradition that was trying to reassert the authority of the temple after the exile. And in order to make it sort of more impressive, that they sort of invented a history for it and transported it into Israel's ancient past. So it was really part of a power play of the priesthood in the postexilic period. And that's why critics have attributed this to the so-called P source. Now, conservatives obviously would reject that view because of -- not only because of its theological implications, but also simply on the basis of its authorship of the Pentateuch. But how do conservatives respond to this question about the relationship between the tent of meeting and the tabernacle? Generally speaking, conservative scholars fall into one of two categories. And one is to see the tent of meeting as a temporary thing that was only in use during this time of -- before the tabernacle came into being. In other words, this was Moses' private tent, if you will. The place where Moses met with God outside the camp. And that this -- we're told in Exodus 32 or it's described in such a way as to suggest that this was sort of a habitual action on Moses' part. And Moses would go out to that sort of every day or from time to time and seek God's guidance as he led the people on. And that this was a completely different thing from the tabernacle, which God later gave in order to -- for Israel to have a place for worship and a place for God to dwell in their midst. So conservatives sometimes see these as two completely unrelated things, one that was temporary and one that was permanent later. With the tabernacle another approach that's used by some conservatives is similar but slightly different. And that is to suggest that the tent of meeting that we have here in Exodus 32 was later incorporated into the tabernacle as a whole. And the reason for that is that in several places in the Old Testament, including, for example, Chapter 40 Verse 22 where it's very obvious there, that the tent that is in the center of the tabernacle is also called the tent of meeting. And so the suggestion some conservative scholars have is that what happened was when the tabernacle was built, this tent that was Moses' private tent became the tent that was -- or at least was incorporated into the tent that was at the heart of the tabernacle. Now, the text doesn't tell us that specifically. But that may be a correct interpretation. There's another alternative that can explain why the tent in the tabernacle is also called the tent of meeting. That might be simply to conclude that the phrase "tent of meeting" is not just the name of a particular tent but is sort of a general phrase to describe any place where a meeting might occur. And since the tent in the tabernacle is the place where the priests come and the place where the high priest enters into the holy of holies, that, you know, it qualifies as a tent of meeting, even if it's not the same as the tent of meeting. So conservatives would either say that these were two different things, one temporary, one permanent. Or that they were one thing in the sense that the tent of meeting became incorporated into the later tabernacle. What conservatives would not do is to do what critical scholars do and suggest that these are essentially corresponding things in two different literary traditions that get edited together in a fairly sloppy way so that they get confused with one another. That seems to me to be an unacceptable explanation of the problem of the relationship between the tent of meeting and the tabernacle in the book of Exodus. *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. ***