I posted this photo last year, but what are holidays like Passover and Easter about if not reliving traditions? The ancient is new every year. So this makes Year Two. “I am Tradition!” as good ol’ Pope Pius IX would have put it.

This is a Google Earth perspective doctored to give us a new view on the crossing of the Red Sea–one that Charlton Heston never could have imagined. It comes via a Sydney-based “creative collective” called The Glue Society. (I first saw it in Christianity Today.) I wish their website were as navigable as their art is cool. But they have a section called “God’s Eye View” that also includes an “aerial” view of the Crucifixion, and the Ark, and the Garden of Eden. I’ll post those later this week. 

So is this how it really was? That’s what everyone seems to want to know these days when it comes to Scripture, Jewish and Christian. It is that desire for the real that drives so much “historical Jesus” scholarship, for example, which ironically often produces crackpot theories (or even solid ones) that then drive believers crazy.

This should make us reflect on what we really want from these historical stories. I think it was Bernanos who noted that the Apostles stank like horses. And they well may have. Be careful what you pray for. Seek the truth of the story. But historical glimpses can inform that truth in a powerful way, and move us to greater insights and appreciation, just as for Christians, artistic renderings like icons–“fakes” like this photo–can pull us deeper into reality.

For today, Good yontif.