Moses: Baptisms in the "Red Sea" and Men arriving in Tirion

Moses, as a character, has been more or less completely absent from this blog.  A couple nights ago I got the feeling I should look into this a bit in a few different ways, and a short note from Leo that came literally the next morning with the simple title of "Moses" had me thinking that, yeah, I should at least develop some kind of perspective on this.

Interestingly enough, and as I mentioned in my post earlier this morning, Moses also potentially ties into this notion of a Baptism (at least one form of it - or perhaps what Baptism points to in the end) as a journey through Space, and between lands and worlds.  

But Moses is important to understand for a whole variety of reasons.  His "Law" pretty much dictated life for people in the Book of Mormon right up until Jesus' appearance at Bountiful.  He is confirmed to be a real person by Book of Mormon prophets, including Nephi.  Importantly, given my recent use of 2 Nephi 3, Joseph of Egypt prophesied of Moses as he was also talking about the future Seer.  The Brass Plates, which we think will still have a major role to play in the future, are somehow connected to him (with 5 Books being called after his name).

I don't have really good answers for what we might want to know about all of that yet.  I do, however, have a perspective now on when we might expect to see him show up in history, how that fits into our story, and even what that might mean for how we get mortal Men to Tirion-Jerusalem.

Placing Moses in the context of Tolkien's Middle-earth, I believe we are looking at a Being who did not step into history until the 4th age or sometime thereafter.  From Tolkien's stories, we don't know much about the 4th age.  We have some of the chronologies compiled up until the death of Aragorn, more or less, but after that the record drops off.  Tolkien attempted an initial draft of a sequel titled "The New Shadow", but only made it 13 draft pages into it before discarding the project completely.  In doing so, he wrote:

I have written nothing beyond the first few years of the Fourth Age. (Except the beginning of a tale supposed to refer to the end of the reign of Eldaron about 100 years after the death of Aragorn. Then I of course discovered that the King's Peace would contain no tales worth recounting; and his wars would have little interest after the overthrow of Sauron; but that almost certainly a restlessness would appear about then, owing to the (it seems) inevitable boredom of Men with the good: there would be secret societies practising dark cults, and 'orc-cults' among adolescents.)

In another letter, he said the beginning of this story "proved both sinister and depressing".

We shouldn't be surprised, of course.  Saruman, who always wanted to rule over Men, in our story is left as the reigning power on this Earth in spirit form, and we should expect to see his influence show up in these ways - as a Satan ruling with blood and horror upon the Earth.

So, this means we don't really have any history or characters from the 4th age onward to go by or to try and find Moses in.

It is guessed, based on one of two of Tolkien's own remarks or letters, that the end of the 3rd age in LOTR corresponded to about 4,000 BC in the history of the Earth, so about 6,000 years ago.  The Old Kingdom of Egypt, to put this in perspective, is said to have originated about 2,500 BC.  Here is Tolkien's quote on the timeline:

I imagine the gap [between the end of the 3rd age and our current day] to be about 6000 years: that is we are now at the end of the Fifth Age, if the Ages were of about the same length as 2nd Age and 3rd Age. But they have, I think, quickened; and I imagine we are actually at the end of the 6th Age, or in the 7th.

So, if we believe in at least some historicity in Tolkien's stories (I do), then at the end of the 4th age we are still have quite a lot of time until civilizations that to us seem ancient even came into being.  Moses, of course, would be associated with Egypt, which is why I bought that civilization up.

But Egypt was also associated with Gondor, in Tolkien's mind, in terms of that civilization tracing some of that civilizations aspect to that of these Middle-earth descendents of Numenor. Wrote Tolkien:

The Númenóreans of Gondor were proud, peculiar, and archaic, and I think are best pictured in (say) Egyptian terms. In many ways they resembled ‘Egyptians’ – the love of, and power to construct, the gigantic and massive. And in their great interest in ancestry and in tombs. (But not of course in 'theology’ : in which respect they were Hebraic and even more puritan…) I think the crown of Gondor (the S. Kingdom) was very tall, like that of Egypt, but with wings attached, not set straight back but at an angle. The N. Kingdom had only a diadem the difference between the N. and S. kingdoms of Egypt.

But again, it would be at least 1,500 years between the start of the 4th age, and the beginnings of what would become Egypt as we think we know it.   I only use it as a general number to give scale to the kind of history we are looking at.  There is a tendency that I feel sometimes to try and match up all of these various Bible characters and stories with Tolkien's legends, and then I have to sit back and realize that a great deal of what is even in the Bible wouldn't have happened even remotely back when Tolkien's stories were set.

And I would include Moses in that bucket.  So, let's just say for our purposes that Moses shows up sometime after the 4th age, and we won't find him anywhere as a character in Tolkien's writings (though I guess with our reincarnation theme, we might, but I wouldn't know where to begin yet on that one).  Bible tradition, for example, has commonly placed Moses during the reign of Ramses II, who lived around 1300 BC.  So, even if you believe that account, that is almost 3,000 years between events of LOTR and when Moses is guessed at having been around in some scholarly circles.  That is a lot of time.

So, Moses comes afterward, though we don't know when, or how soon or late that was in relation to the start of the 4th age.  But we know at some point he takes a group of people , rescues them from Egypt or an Egypt-like civilization, and delivers them to the "Promised Land", which ultimately, if we stick to the story I have been trying to piece together here, would mean Tirion.  How do we know this?  Because Nephi specifically states that Moses led his ancestors to the land where they currently live, which is Jerusalem.  One of my more "creative" ideas is Jerusalem is an extra-terrestrial city known also as Tirion, so in order to be consistent and make that work, Moses led a group of people there.

In this view, though, I see a solution to one of my major problems, which is how do I get mortal Men to Tirion?  Recall that when I first thought of this hair-brained idea of Jerusalem-as-Tirion, and that Lehi and crew actually left another world and went to another world (never having even been on this Earth!), I had to find some way for Men, including Lehi's family, to have been living in Tirion in the first place.

If you remember, the solution or fix I came up with originally was to have Men sail on to Tiroin from Numenor before its destruction.  In doing so, I pointed to Melchizedek (who I think is Elros, the first King of Numenor), and suggested that, according to Alma's words in Alma 13, that many Men (though Elves born in the bodies of Men) would have arrived in Tirion from Numenor during at least part of  their history (particularly the early years).

I think that may be true, at least for some Beings, but I now have a far easier solution, and it was the story of Moses that gave it to me.  To put it simply, it would be the story of the Exodus, in whatever form that story actually played out, in which Moses would have brought mortal Men from Middle-earth, dividing and crossing a "Sea", and arriving in the land of Jerusalem.  This make sense, and in fact in reading Nephi's words, it has to be this way.  Nephi specifically said that it was Moses who led their 'fathers'.  So, while it may be true (or not!) that Numenoreans found their way over several, several thousands of years before Moses, it is rather to Moses and the people he brought to Tirion that Nephi finds his ancestry sometime between 4,000 BC and 600 BC (the approximate time Lehi leaves Tirion).

OK, so does that track?  I think it might.  In this story, Men from Middle-earth are led to Tirion, where it is said that specifically that they replace whatever inhabitants that had lived there before.  There is a whole chunk of time between the destruction of Numenor and the dividing of the lands or worlds of Arda to Moses' day that we just don't know what happened in or around Tirion.  Whatever it was, by the time Moses shows up, they are less righteous than Team Moses, and are driven from the land.  Again, we don't who they were or how they came to be there, but "Israel" displaces them and moves in.

Fast forward many years, and descendents of some of these Men, in the form of Lehi's family, travel from Tirion to another Promised Land, this one being Eressea #2, where the Jaredites had previously been for a really, really long time but are not destroyed, except for Coriantumr and Ether.

In broad strokes, this works for me, and solves the issue of how mortal Men arrived on Tirion, to then later be taken away to other lands or worlds.  Moses brought them.  As to the other details (what was the actual Law of Moses, for example?  What  is the true story of Mt. Sinai, as another?), I have no idea.  One similarity we see, though, in the actual Exodus story is his leading the people to the promised land by means of a Rod or Staff that divided the Sea and made the path for Israel to walk on..  In our story, it is Hermes Staff that I have suggested would be used to create a path for people to make this next Sea crossing.

It also makes a great deal of sense in matching up some details from Words of Them That Have Slumbered, specifically with respect to Joseph and his first wife, Verlu.  I am assuming Verlu is a truthful part of Pengolodh's story, since she comes up in my words as a reason for Joseph being detained on our world back in 2020.  In my first guess, where we only had early Numenoreans as the ancestors for later Tirion-ites, I didn't have a good way to trace Lehi's lineage back to Joseph.  And Nephi is very clear that not only Lehi, but also Laban, are descendents of Joseph.

Joseph had two sons with Verlu, known to us as Ephraim and Manasseh, names familiar to any Bible and Book of Mormon reader.  They were stationed over in Middle-earth during the calamity, survived that time, and it seems likely were integrated into some clans of Men that were given some extra attention in Pengolodh's account, and even some promises from Ki-Abroam/ Abraham with respect to a Being resembling Moses (he actually uses that name Mos'th that Pengolodh likes to use, either because it is how the cool kids say Moses, or because it isn't the same person - who knows).

In any case, if we tie things loosely to that account, my guess is that it is these Clans that will at some point become the "Israelites" of the Bible in the story, with Ephraim and Manasseh integrating with them.  This, then, is how Lehi can trace his pedigree back to Manasseh, and therefor Joseph.

So like I said, without at least placing both Moses in the 4th Age or thereafter, and Joseph's sons Ephraim and Manasseh among those clans, my Tirion story would have a hard time being consistent with details that Nephi writes about in the Book of Mormon, namely the existence of Moses himself as well as Nephi's ancestry.

As it is, although I can't say much about Moses' actual life yet at this point, the fact that we can work a little bit with the above general observations and theories actually saves, and in some ways, further supports the Tirion-as-Jerusalem theory.

So, Moses will come along, lead these people not just over a little body of water that we know as the Red Sea, but take them on an inter-stellar voyage to the land of Tirion on Aman.

This then gets to this notion of 'Baptism' I started picking at in my post earlier today, in that Baptism, perhaps at its core or in its final form, is literally a Being travelling through Space in their bodies, to both see and be 'born again' in Tirion.

I mentioned language of Moses' own journey that seemed to allude to both that overall view, as well as what I've guessed specifically to Moses himself, in that he and his people were 'baptized' in the Waters of Space.  In referencing the Exodus, and specifically Moses parting the Red Sea, the apostle Paul makes reference to "Baptism" as part of the event in his epistle to the Corinthians:

Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant, how that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea.  And were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea...."

Now, I am sure there are bible scholars that have other words for baptism there, or other translations that don't involve that word or concept, but, hey, I am a guy who looks to Zelda video games for heavenly inspiration - this is good enough for me to at least assert some potential connections and ask some questions.

And one fundamental question is this:  It was said that Moses parted the Red Sea, and Israel walked through on dry land - What does that mean?  If Seas and Oceans in other parts of my story represent Space or whatever this divide between worlds actually is (as I argue for the Lehites as well as the Jaredites in their travels to the Promised Land), why would I not, if I am being consistent, consider that Moses' own passage through a Sea is also along those same lines?

And Moses' journey seems to be most like the one I am suggesting might be in the future for other Beings, in that it seems like he and these "Israelites" walked through this now parted Sea.  Wouldn't this be something like the Sky Walk I have thought through in various posts?  The path he cut through the Sea similar to the symbolism of the Swordsman of the Sky, Orion-Menelmacar, slicing a path through the sky with his Sword?

I think the answer has to be, if we have suspended our disbelief enough to get to this point in this story, that yes, it is possible, and probably even likely, that Moses' own journey through the Red Sea involved an interstellar trip through space.  I am not sure what the "Red Sea" specifically points to (other than once again we have the color "Red"), but it would obviously be different than the body of water over in the Middle-east, or at least not limited to that.

And this then takes us back to baptism, and my dream from this morning once again suggesting a journey into Space, in the form of the phrase "Realm of Thingol", that realm being Ekkaia (in Tolkien's language), or the Encircling Sea around our Earth, which I guess is Outer Space or something like it.  And it also takes my mind to Nephi's words from 2 Nephi 31, where baptism isn't just the act of putting one's body in a baptismal font, river, lake, or otherwise on this Earth, but an actual entrance into a gate and onto a path that leads a person through and into waters to another world.  I think there is room for both of those actions, by they way - a metaphorical practice, symbol, or sign that points to a very literal experience.

That is kind of what my mind is circling around at the moment, even though I don't know how it works.  It seems, despite the lack of detail on function, that it is a logical statement to say that if Space is an Ocean, than walking into it in some fashion would be a Baptism, as I understand that word.

What does it mean to 'divide' the Sea in this instance, or create a path that people can walk on?  I don't know, but I think there is something here.

I was reminded of a dream I had roughly two weeks ago.  I stood in something like a farm field, and looked up to the sky.  It as completely blue, but on the horizon, a completely black strip was moving across the sky  The strip extended all the way across the sky, and moved perpendicular to its orientation.  I at first thought the strip was moving, but then figured that it was actually the Earth's rotation that must be making the strip seem to move.  Meaning, it became apparent, particularly after waking up and thinking about it, that the strip was at a set position in the sky somewhere above the Earth, and as the Earth rotated, the strip's relative position to me changed.  Based on this, the dark strip was oriented running north and south, and was moving east and west (it was moving from my left to right, but who knows which was I was facing, and I'm not sure that it is important).

When I saw this black strip in an otherwise blue sky, and as it passed overhead, rather than just seeming like it was only a different color,  it seemed like almost a gap in the sky itself - like a rift, and were you to enter it, you wouldn't actually be travelling in physical space anymore, but rather a gap within space, if that make sense.

That was pretty much the dream sequence, but this question of Moses parting Seas and other topics has me wondering whether this image has anything to do with that.  Just logging it for now and noting its potential connection with the parting or dividing of Skies as Seas.