From Mount Sinai to the Tabernacle : a reading of Exodus 24:12-40:38 as a case of intercalated double plot.

Abstract

The aim of this dissertation is to read Exodus 24:12-40:38 as a case of "intercalated double plot". It attempts to shed new light on the understanding of the intriguing combination of the golden calf story and the tabernacle story in the Book of Exodus by means of the combination of narrative criticism and Richard Levin's study of the "double plot" convention in the English Renaissance drama. Narrative criticism helps us to see the distinctiveness of and the interrelations between the golden calf and tabernacle stories through the grids of structure, narrator, plot, characters, temporal and spatial settings, and the relations between discourse time and story time. On the one hand, the golden calf story and the tabernacle story are distinctive. The golden calf does not appear in the tabernacle story and the tabernacle story does not appear in the golden calf story. The vocabulary is distinct, too. For example, the stone tablets are called by different names in both stories. Finally, the two stories are distinct in style. In spite of these distinctive features of each story, Levin's paradigm helps us to see systematically how the narrator connected the golden calf story and the tabernacle story in four different modes of connection, called respectively material cause, efficient cause, formal cause, and final cause. On the level of material cause, we see that both stories share the same main characters and spatial setting. Also, the structure of Exod. 24: 12-40:38 shows that these two stories are closely related each other. On the level of the efficient cause, the consecutive arrangement of these two stories seems to provide an implicit causality. On the level of the formal cause, we see that the narrator provides multiple parallel features to emphasize the contrasts between the tabernacle and the golden calf. If the tabernacle symbolizes God's presence, the golden calf stands for God's absence. On the level of the final cause, the golden calf story serves as a negative' foil of the tabernacle story. The implied author achieves an effect of dialectics. The golden calf in fact highlights the other side of the theme of God's presence in the tabernacle story, that is, the theme of God's holiness. By juxtaposing these antithetical stories, the implied author delivers a powerful theological message which can never be achieved by telling these stories separated.