Worship as Dramatic Re-presentation

Recent studies of the history of Israel's religion have demonstrated convincingly that the formative events of Israel's faith were dramatically acted out in worship. In fact, some of the Old Testament narratives have reached their present form as a result of the historicizing of cultic dramatic re-presentation. The Exodus Narrative The Exodus narrative in Exodus 119 is a reclothed festal liturgy from which something of the ritual may be recovered. In Exodus 12:42, the "watch night" drama appears, a re-creating and a re-presenting of the drama in which the Hebrews anxiously awaited the intervention of Yahweh in Egypt, a repeated cultic drama that bridged the gap of space and time and reestablished the saving relationship for each generation with Yahweh. In close connection is Exodus 12, the instructions for the Passover feast, said to be observed as "a memorial to all generations. " The re-creation of the watch night, the blood on the doorposts and the lintel, the eating of unleaven…