The story of Moses hearing the voice of God in the burning bush and directing him to lead
his people may be familiar.
But, what really happened?
Could a burning bush actually talk to you?
Here's the burning bush from the Bible explained.
Spiritual beings revealing themselves to humanity is present in some form or fashion in the
myths, legends, and/or doctrines of religious faith in every culture within every country.
It's called theophany, the self-revelation of the divine to humankind.
The events of the burning bush are first and foremost another example of the Hebrew God
revealing himself to his people.
According to the Encyclopaedia Biblica,
"The story in the form which it assumes in Exodus appears to have resulted from a fusion
of two widely current beliefs that fire indicated the divine presence, and that certain trees
were the permanent abodes of deities."
Translating Hebrew, even for the most well-versed, can be tricky, and it is often very easy to
mistranslate or, at the very least, not find an easy one-to-one correlation between Hebrew
and English.
In fact, what some translate as "bush" others translate as "Sinai" - you know, the mountain
where Moses later received the Ten Commandments.
According to Jewish Encyclopedia,
"The word rendered 'bush' is found only in this passage [of Exodus] and in Deut.
xxxiii. 16, where, however, it is possible that the right reading is 'Sinai.'"
If not Mount Sinai, it is not clear to this day where exactly the location of the burning
bush is, but one potential place is St. Catherine's monastery in what is now modern-day Egypt.
Named after a martyred Egyptian saint, it is said that this monastery was built on the
location of the burning bush and has a bush growing still within its premises.
Moses was low-born at a time when the Pharaoh ordered all male Israelite babies to be killed,
so his mother sent him down a river to save him where he was discovered and raised by
the daughter of the Pharaoh.
Yet being part of the Pharaoh's family meant that he came into contact with his own people
who were the slaves of the Egyptians.
So, according to Exodus, Moses struck down and killed an Egyptian slavemaster, and in
turn had to flee the wrath of the Pharaoh.
After Moses' encounter with God at the burning bush, his whole world was upended.
As an escaped murderer, he was called to go back to the land of his crime and free his
people from the Pharaoh, the man who allowed him to be raised in his courts.
"Now therefore behold.
I will send you unto Pharaoh, that you may bring forth my people, the children of Israel,
out of Egypt."
The brilliance of this story is in how it has Moses go back and do the same thing he
tried to do when he murdered the Egyptian — enact justice — but, now, he has the
power of God at his side instead of merely his own human will.
It is this divine mandate that allows him to succeed.
But the major religions differ on how they interpret the burning bush.
Exodus is perhaps the most important book within the Torah, because it shows the endurance
and extremes of God's faithfulness to his people — literally freeing them from slavery
so that they can be God's people.
According to the Jewish Theological Seminary of America,
"Moses already senses that freedom from Egypt is not simply about personal liberation.
Rather, the endeavor speaks to a larger, national mission of serving God."
The Jewish Encyclopedia goes even further with the imagery of the burning bush, explaining,
"The burning but not consuming fire of the bush indicated to Moses that Israel would
successfully endure all the sorrows and pains inflicted upon it by the Egyptians."
The imagery of the fire that burns but does not disintegrate the bush is a symbol for
the Jewish people that, much like their slavery in Egypt, whatever suffering they might endure,
they will come forth from it by the hand of their God.
In his commentary on Exodus, John Calvin, a Protestant Reformer, wrote,
"The bush is likened to the humble and despised people; their tyrannical oppression is not
unlike the fire which would have consumed them, had [God not] miraculously interposed
[...] that though the waves of trouble beat against the Church and threaten her destruction,
yet 'shall she not be moved,' for 'God is in the midst of her.'"
There is a common tie between the Protestant Christian rendering of this event and the
Jewish one: God sees his people being oppressed and delivers them from their troubles.
As long as they are God's people, they will not be consumed.
"Say to him, the Lord God of Israel says let my people go!"
Where the Christian and Jewish interpretations diverge is in who is included within the "people
of God."
Unlike the Jewish interpretations, the Christian view of the inhabitants of God's "national
mission" involves both Jews and Gentiles, a term for non-Jewish persons or nations.
The Orthodox and Catholic churches have various disagreements in doctrine and practices; however,
they come to a similar interpretative framework for the burning bush that is very different
from Jewish and Protestant interpretations.
That's because they view the Old Testament story of the Burning Bush as a metaphor for
the New Testament birth of Jesus.
Both the Orthodox and Catholic churches have an "Unburnt Bush" icon that shows Mary within
the symbolic flames of the bush.
According to Aleteia,
"[...] just as the bush was burning without being consumed, the Virgin gave birth to Christ
while remaining a virgin."
The St. Paul Center speaks to the various moments in the Old Testament where the divine
theophany appears in fire descending onto humanity.
Curtis Mitch goes on to explain,
"Now, if Mary's child is a divine Child, and the divine presence is revealed in fire, then
it seems beautifully fitting to see the Burning Bush as a figure of her divine maternity."
There are various sects and offshoots of the mainstream Protestant Christian religion.
And even these various sects have their own take on the burning bush even though their
starting point falls in line with the mainstream Christian church.
According to the Christian Science Journal,
"The student of the Scriptures can trace this fire of inspiration, this holy light of Truth
which illumines human consciousness, in the experiences of patriarch, prophet, and disciple."
What should be noticed here is the language he used.
Compared to the other Jewish and Christian interpretations, Christian Scientists use
a framework that hearkens back to Enlightenment philosophy instead of divine mystery.
Enlightenment thinkers embraced reason as a core tenet, notes Britannica, over faith
and doctrine.
The Mormons also shift their language around the burning bush.
As Mormon scholar Ellis T. Rasmussen, explains,
"A manifestation was given to Moses by a messenger of light, causing a bush to appear to burn;
it was [not really] afire and was not consumed."
According to the Mormons, the bush only appeared to be on fire, but was not, in actual fact,
on fire, which is why it was not consumed.
Instead they focus on the illuminating glory of God, with the bush signaling a message
from God, rather than the miracle of a non-consuming, physical fire.
Islam, too, incorporates their own understanding of the burning bush incident, which varies
from both Jewish and Christian interpretations.
There are three separate mentions of this story of Moses in the Qur'an, but only one
of them mentions the burning bush.
According to Surah 28:30,
"And when [Musa, or Moses] came to it, a voice was uttered from the right side of the valley
in the blessed spot of the bush, saying: O Musa!
surely I am Allah, the Lord of the worlds"
The Qur'annic version of the story strips it of the Jewish salvation tale and instead
solidifies the revelation that Allah is the only true God.
Yet, according to Esra Akin-Kivanc's study on "Mirror Writing in Islamic Calligraphy,"
"Moses's metaphysical experience [of the burning bush] can be considered ... viewing a muthanna:
one's enlightenment is circumscribed by one's level of preparedness and receptivity."
In other words, the form a revelation takes is due to the reality of our want or need.
Kivanc notes that Musa needed fire for his family, so he saw the revelation of Allah
as a bush on fire.
The content of the revelation may be completely holy and other, but the form in which the
revelation takes, according to Kivanc, is relative to the desire of the witness.
Bahá'í is one of the newer religions that started in the 19th century.
According to Encyclopedia Britannica, it teaches, quote, "the essential unity of all religions
and the unity of humanity," and that
"[The] founders of the world's great religions have been manifestations of God and agents
of a progressive divine plan for the education of the human race."
One mention of the burning bush comes in a Bahá'í prayer:
"The brightness of the fire of your love will no doubt fuse and unify the contending peoples
and kindreds of the earth, whilst the fierceness of the flame of enmity and hatred cannot but
result in strife and ruin."
In another text, there is an anarchistic tone to the proceeding of Moses back to Egypt:
"The palaces of the potentates shall be laid waste and the imposing buildings of the emperors
reduced to dust."
It seems as if the Bahá'í interpretation seeks to strike a balance between fire as
illumination and fire as destruction, never quite siding with one or the other.
The Rastafarian movement started in the 1930s among the working class Blacks of Jamaica
who saw middle class whites as those who stole their African identity away from them when
they were brought to the Caribbean as slaves.
Haile Selassie, who was the leader of Ethiopia for much of the 20th century, is considered
their Moses and their God.
The movement is by its very design an Afro-centric religion, and it uses ganja in some of its
rituals.
According to the New Times,
"[Ganja] is used as a holy sacrament by Rastas in many ways.
Rastas smoke herb to meditate, symbolizing the burning bush, and for its curative properties
i.e. asthma."
"The more you accept herb, the more you accept Rastafari."
In similar fashion, High Times asks the question as to whether Moses was stoned when he saw
the burning bush, saying
"In 1936, an etymologist working at the Institute of Anthropology in Warsaw, Sula Benet, noted
that the Hebrew words kaneh and kaneh-bosem (cane and fragrant cane) — mistakenly translated
as "calamus" in the Old Testament — were in fact a reference to our modern word cannabis."
Science has, of course, sought to provide answers to the many events of the Bible, usually
by providing scientific explanations for Biblical phenomenon.
Assuming the Bible is a literal historical record of events, scientists work to explain
what the writers of the Bible might have been talking about when discussing things like
the burning bush.
One such explanation for the burning bush involves the scraping of tectonic plates against
each other during an earthquake, creating an electrical spark that is conducted through
layers of rock creating a glow or illumination right at the horizon of the sky.
Another explanation revolves around the potential type of tree that Moses saw — the Dictamnus
albus.
According to McGill University,
"In the summer, the plant, also known as the 'gas plant,' exudes a variety of volatile
oils that can catch fire readily and may give the impression that the bush is burning."
On the other hand, Benny Shanon, professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University
in Jerusalem, posits that it's likely Moses was hallucinating due to the smoke from the
burning bush.
He bases this speculation on his own experiences in the Amazon with ayahuasca.
While each of these interpretative frameworks has their nuances, it does seems that the
thing that ties them all together revolves around the concepts of light and revelation.
Often the two concepts are tied together.
As the light shines down, more is revealed by its being.
Within the various monotheistic religions and their offshoots and sects, the burning
bush has been some form of revelation to humanity, some self-disclosure of God.
Even in scientific circles, light and revelation are still key but instead represent properties
of the mind of humanity to search out the truth of their own accord, to reveal more
and more of a purely material world.
Whatever you believe, the story of the burning bush provides a framework in which to explore
the nature and means of revelation in our world today.
Check out one of our newest videos right here!
Plus, even more Grunge videos about your favorite biblical stories are coming soon.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one.