Around two hundred years before Jesus was born, a Jew named Ezekiel lived in Alexandria, Egypt, a center of biblical learning and culture. Ezekiel, living in Alexandria, evidently loved going to the theater to see the work of the late, great Greek tragedians Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. One day he must have had a great idea: “Wouldn’t it be cool if someone wrote a Greek tragedy about Moses and Pharaoh, and how God freed the slaves from Egypt?”

            Okay, he probably didn’t say “cool,” but still, it was a wowzer of an idea. After all, there are some great things in Exodus that would make for fantastic drama, like God speaking out of a burning bush, and the Ten Plagues. And what about the slaves girding their loins and eating hurriedly and with great anxiety while the Angel of Death passed over their homes during Passover?

            And then there was the greatest scene of all — the Egyptian army in their magnificent chariots bearing down on the escaped slaves, their backs against, well, not against the wall, but against the Red Sea, with no escape before Moses parted the sea at the command of God. The people passed through to safety, and the water closed in on Pharaoh’s chariots, destroying them totally.

            Now some scenes might call for special effects beyond the capabilities of second century BC artisans. No problem. In Greek tragedy, the most action-packed and goriest scenes always took place offstage, while someone onstage described what had just happened. The audience pictured these things in their imagination, which can often be the most effective special effect of all.

            And the best part of all was, if Ezekiel could tweak the story just a little bit, the largely non-Jewish Egyptian audience would see themselves in the story! Considering that the Egyptians had

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