The Passover Parable

by Larry D. Harper

Jesus said the writings of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms-that is, the entirety of the Hebrew Scriptures-are all about Him (Luke 24:27, 44; John 5:46). Yet few today can find any reference to Jesus Christ in the Hebrew Scriptures because they don’t understand that God has used parables since the time of Moses to speak concerning His Son. The Passover Parable is at the heart of God’s message concerning His Firstborn Son, Jesus Christ. That message can be seen in the carefully orchestrated parabolic pantomime that God directed Corporate Israel, His Firstborn Son (Ex. 4:22), to enact during the Exodus of the sons of Israel from Egypt.

37 pages, Staple Bound

First published July 1, 1991

About the author

Harper's formal education is in the area of ancient Near Eastern languages. He received the Bachelor of Arts degree in Classical Greek in 1972 from William Jennings Bryan College in Dayton, Tennessee; the Master of Arts degree in Old Testament studies (Biblical Hebrew) in 1974 from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois; and the Ph.D. Candidate degree in Near Eastern Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1980.

In 1980, Harper began working full-time doing biblical research and writing under the auspices of his own private research endeavor--The Elijah Project. Harper has 11 publications listed on goodreads.com. He is currently engaged in producing his own "standardized" translation of the Scriptures.

Reviews

[Freddy Mack · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book got me to think "parabolically" as Mr. Harper says and not "philosophically". This was the biggest help for me to start seeing The Truth in that regard. I saw the tremendous value of learning from a teacher called by God vs my own self- interpretation or someone else's. This shift in my false thinking brought much more of the message of Scripture to life. What a difference The Truth makes. Highly recommend.

[Faye Chandler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading this book, The Passover Parable, helped me see into the mind-set of Moses and understand some of what he wrote in the Pentateuch about the plan of God as it applied to ancient Israel and as it applies in the present day. Very enlightening reading.

[J · Rating 1 out of 5]

I am not quite sure where I ended up getting this particular book nor what it would really be about. Perhaps I was thinking about the fact that the Plagues of Egypt were based upon disproving the Egyptian deities and was hoping that as such The Passover Parable would continue to include something familiar. Instead the book is a bit vague while bouncing around as much.

First of all the book tries to explore the usage of parabolic pantomime within the stay of the Israelites as slaves sojourning in Ancient Egypt. Unfortunately for those who don't know what parabolic pantomime is the book doesn't give a clear definition to the term itself. For me to get a clearer idea of this concept, which fills the book I had to look it up online since the majority of the book keeps bringing it up and go figure the website, which is probably the origins for this book, has the concept in a much clearer definition than was ever introduced in the book.

For those who want to know: Parabolic Pantomime - Is an event orchestrated by God to explain what some future event will be like—parabolically speaking. Therefore, a parabolic pantomime has one unique characteristic that sets it apart from all other events—it always involves the direct intervention of God into human affairs.

Another term that is a need to know to readers is Parabolic Image.. The definition for this is: The first of the two constituent parts of a parable, with the second constituent part being a Hebrew idiom. A parabolic image is a mental image that Moses and the Prophets of Israel used in their prophecies to speak concerning God’s purpose in the birth, life, death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

After that horrid introduction I have to say that the book does start off pretty strong. First of all the author Larry D. Harper explores the concept on the people that this is going to focus on and hopes to clarify who they are. Should they be considered Egyptians since they were in Egypt for 400 years, are they Canaanites due to their origins or are they Hebrews? In a sense it is a logical question to address, especially since the Jewish people have gone by so many names due to various times in their history. And technically if you live in a country like Egypt for so long and/or were born then that would make you a citizen of that country. But the main underlying reason for this question is to found the religious belief of that same people.

For this author the people are Canaanite in their origins and relate to God as such as well as to His city but in a Canaanite pantheism way. And although they were influenced by the Ancient Egyptian religious beliefs for their time spent in that country they happily returned to the Canaanite belief system once brought out and when returned to a similar cultural zone returned to that belief system until their capture by Babylon.

From there the author turns from the Canaanite system to explore the Passover in an Egyptian style and explains how it was a challenge to the Egyptian deities that God made His parabolic pantomime. This is where basically the book lost me for although parts did make sense based on a historical philosophical view it didn't explore it in depth far enough to connect it and just basically skipped from one point to another thus making parts of the whole really vague.

At the same time most of the notes or even the writing by the author suggests that the topic will be explored further in more mentioned works. As such this is an advertisement bait and one that is trying to bring the reader back to the source site instead of a series. As such it really turns me off along with the rest of books that do is, especially just since the book isn't good enough to incite my interest in chasing down these leads.

All in all it is was an okay read and one that gives the reader a concept of looking at the Bible through another viewpoint, which makes sense due to the influence they were living with at that time. But otherwise its vagueness and advertising is just too much to make it even worth delving into this subject more.

[Warrior Princess · Rating 4 out of 5]

An amazing teaching on the people that Moses led out of Egypt and what God was and is still doing. Short and sweet but full of depth and truth.

[Carolyn Sullivan · Rating 5 out of 5]

God originally taught Israel through the "parabolic pantomime" which symbolically states His message. It is a powerful and artistic way of demonstrating a lesson that makes it understandable to all. Breaks it down to the simplest form that removes all grayness. This art was lost when early leaders distorted it by injecting their own so called sophisticated methods. This book lets the believer have a chance to walk in Israel's shoes while they are being taught by God the original undistorted message of the Passover. Where He reveals to them where their belief of lies was incorrect and hands them the ultimate truth.