Passover is, of course, the historical celebration par excellence, celebrating the formative event in Jewish history, the Exodus of the Israelites from Egyptian slavery. The events commemorated in this holiday have had continual relevance to Jew and Gentile in all historical epochs, as a model for the understanding of their contemporary situations of national oppression, exiles and liberations.
For many Jewish thinkers over the ages the lessons of Passover and the Exodus were not exhausted in their historical memories. The central themes that dominate the holiday were seen as metaphors and symbols for many facets of individual human psychology and religious experience.
A pioneer of this symbolic approach to reading the Bible was the first-century philosopher and exegete Philo Judaeus of Alexandria. For Philo the whole of Scripture was a complex mesh of symbols which illustrate the abstract truths and mysteries of philosophy and moral virtue. His treatment of the Exodus account is consistent with this approach.
In formulas that echo the assertion of the Haggadah, that “each individual must regard himself as if he himself had escaped from Egypt,” Philo portrays “leaving Egypt” as an internal struggle that must be waged continually in every person’s life. It is the fight to liberate one’s mind from the temptations of the body, symbolized by Egypt, which is always trying to hold us back from the road leading to the freedom of virtuous living.
—From Exodus of the Spirit, Prof. E Segal, University of Calgary
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