The Old Testament took about a thousand years to be put together, and it was written by various people, most of whom are unknown.11 The folks who have put these books together fall into four groups: the Elohist, the Yahwist, the Deuteronomist, and the Priestly.

We encounter the same problem with Moses as we do with the figure of Jesus. It is unclear whether these two figures had a factual historical existence. For example, there is a figure in ancient Syria named Mises, whose story is the same as Moses.12 In fact, with close observation, you may conclude that Moses’s story is no different from the stories of Gilgamesh, the Buddha, Mahavira, and many other similar sages and prophets.

The story is as follows.

The Pharaoh receives a prophecy in a dream that a child will be born who will initiate a Hebrew uprising—a powerful revolution that will topple Pharaoh’s kingdom. So troubling is the Pharaoh’s dream and its message that he orders all newborn males to be killed. Hearing this, Moses’s mother puts Moses in a small basket in a river and faithfully lets the water carry the basket to a safe place. He is abandoned by his true parents and picked up by Pharaoh’s sister. Moses was always under the impression that this woman was his real, biological mother.

The first message in the story is that, as children, we are all like Moses in assuming that we have immortality in our blood and greatness in our veins. That we know who and what we are. We can trust that our parents will guide us towards understanding and wisdom. This is the arrogance of youth. An arrogance because we haven’t yet been tested by the complicated events that life puts before us. All young people have the same hopes and dreams as Moses: in that, we’re going to be the next great artist or a revolutionary politician or have a perfect marriage and perfect children. Then, suddenly, tragedy hits, and we realize that we are not who we imagined ourselves to be.

This assumed identity is false in another way. The differences between beggars and kings are accidental, as we did nothing to earn whatever poverties or privileges we have in our lives. Had we been given different parents or been born into other cities, or at a different time in history, our entire lives would be different. We didn’t decide on our parents, culture or ethnicity, birthplace, or personality, yet we take these qualities into our identity. Because of this, whenever we begin to ask difficult questions about our identity, we are abandoned by our parents and whatever identities our parents have given us. Parents can provide a home for our bodies but cannot offer our identity or soul.

The story of Moses begins with a man who lives with an unexamined and untested identity, hopes, and ambitions. If you’ve ever seen the movie The Matrix, it says, “Human beings are grown; they’re no longer born.”13 Moses, at least initially, is a man who is grown but not yet born.

Tragedy hits Moses one day in his middle age, when he kills an Egyptian soldier and the Pharaoh, who Moses assumed cared for him, sentences him to exile. He is no longer in the garden of Eden. Moses has questions that have set his heart ablaze. His desert life begins because no one has the power to nourish the yearnings of his heart and answer the inquiries of his mind. Moses realizes that he is not what he thought himself to be. Even when he finds out who his true mother is, he’s not satisfied. He wants to know his true identity, the identity that is unrelated to space and time.

Like the Buddha, he walks away from his kingdom and distances himself from the people who helped raise him and protect him from harm. He walks away from his biological mother, a woman who longed to be held by her son. His physical presence in the desert is a symbol of his psychological state. The desert is where he asks questions and has no idea where to get the answers. He marries, but he’s unhappy; he has children, but he’s sad; and eventually he realizes that there’s something inside him that says, “None of this stuff makes you who you are. You have the Bird of Paradise inside you. Go see if you can find this Bird.” This is the God within that Moses is looking for. The story concludes when Moses sees God in the form of a burning bush. At this stage, he starts a new journey, freeing his people. He’s no longer an accidental human being, and he’s no longer a father or a son or a husband. Moses’s journey to God tells us what has to be lost for a person to realize what it truly means to be human. It is through him that Israel and Judaism are born.

What usually happens is that the hero, like a magnet, attracts lots of people for all the right reasons. Everyone desires to LIVE. And they do so, at least for a short while, through the hero. And when this magnet or hero goes away, the followers assume that they understand who the hero was and what his message entailed. They make commentary on the hero, then there’s a commentary on the commentary, and then you have a tradition.

There is a story that comes from the Middle East.14 Usually, you take a gift when you’re invited to someone’s house in the Middle East. In this story, the guest brings a duck. Right in front of the guest, the host grabs the duck, twists its neck and kills it, defeathers it, and quickly makes duck soup. And then all of the people sit and have soup. It’s real duck soup!

The following day, a stranger comes to the door and says, “I’m the friend of that guy who brought you the duck, and I was told that you have some soup.” Middle Easterners are very hospitable people, so he is invited in and given duck soup. Day after day, strangers come and say, “I’m the friend of the friend of the friend who brought you the duck.” The man offers all of the soup, but after a while, he says to himself, “This is ridiculous. I don’t even know who these people are, yet I have to give them food? I need to put a stop to this.” Another guest knocks on the door and says, “I’m the friend of the friend of the friend of the friend who brought you the duck.” And the host places a bowl of soup before this man, who takes a spoonful and says, “Wait, this is only warm water.” And the host says, “This is the soup of the soup of the soup of the soup.” This is what happens to the heroes. Followers ultimately turn them into warm water with no real substance.

We need to understand that Jesus spoke Aramaic, but the New Testament was first written in Coptic, then Greek, Latin, German, and English.15 And you should be aware that so many things are lost in translation, which makes what we read today the soup of the soup of the soup. The traditions can never covey the passion inside people like Moses and Jesus and the Buddha and Gilgamesh. Do you think that when people today talk about Malcolm X they understand how this man overcame the prison environment and the intoxication of power given to him by Elijah Muhammad? What makes someone like Moses or Jesus just walk away from their life? Why does someone like the Buddha just walk away from a marriage? Do you think these people wake up and say, “I’m walking away”? This is not a single vision—this conflict lives inside them for many years, and then all of a sudden, it erupts. They’re depressed, confused, and angry. One day they’re good, and the next day they’re wrong. They live in this chaotic tornado for years, and then they explode. And all that we see, as the audience, is the explosion. We don’t see all of the conflicting emotions inside them.

The disciples, and especially the people who come after the disciples, have none of this. They’re poor copies of the real thing. They hear something that sounds nice, store it in their memory, and then regurgitate it like a good parrot with little understanding, and then all of a sudden you have a tradition. They’re the soup of the soup of the soup. People like Malcolm X, Moses, Jesus, and the Buddha are nomads because they have no resting place. Unlike us, they are not guided by tradition. They are living organisms that are guided by the wisdom that is within them. The moment an idea becomes a tradition, it lives in a container with a tightly closed lid. It no longer flows freely and has little life to it. Unless, of course, someone comes and breaks open the cage. Once the cage is broken open, life can flow and live again.