ABSTRACT
Exodus illustrates common errors in the mythic comprehension mode. The most dramatic one is confusing transcendence and condescendence. The former is moving from the known to the unknown, looking up with wonder and fear, while the latter is feeling exalted and looking down on the everyday world. The consequences of condescendence can be deadly, as Exodus dramatizes. Moses is gone so long from his people, they despair, and build the Golden Calf to worship. When Moses returns to them, he flies into a rage and orders the faithful to kill the apostates, forgetting that God had wanted to do the same thing, but Moses persuaded Him to spare the people. Religious wars continue the unfortunate confusion today – condescendence converts the unfamiliar into the disposable. Another major error of mythic comprehension is fossilization, converting the experience of transcendence, with its wonder and openness to the unknown, into its opposite – making the uncanny and inexplicable into something defined, familiar, concrete, and therefore unchanging. Examples include idolatry, but also ideology and dogmatism. The correct use of mythic comprehension involves a constant tension between the familiar versus what is unknown and uncanny – the experience of home versus the experience of infinite horizons.
