Episode 342: The Mandela Effect in the Bible, Part Two--The Angel of Death

In their new series, pastors Erica, Sarah, and Steve explore characters we would have SWORN were in the Bible, but turn out to be fictions, mistaken recollections, or all-out mash-ups of other biblical characters into something new.  That phenomenon of collectively misremembering and event or person is sometimes called the Mandela Effect, and it turns out we do it quite a bit with the Bible.  That's especially true when we get our mental picture of Bible stories from pop culture, movies, and TV shows, rather than wrestling with the actual text.  And in this episode we look at a classic example from the story of the Exodus.  When Moses sets the enslaved Hebrews free from the clutches of the evil Pharaoh, the last straw that finally pushes the Egyptian king to release them is the death of the firstborn of every Egyptian family.  But who or what is responsible for those deaths?  In pop culture we have invented a figure called "the angel of death" as the entity who has been given this dirty work to do, but in the storytelling of Exodus itself, it's God who strikes down the firstborn.  So what difference does it make, and where do we see ourselves in this story?  Join this conversation to explore all these questions, along with some pop culture signposts ranging from The Prince of Egypt and Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments to Game of Thrones and American Gods.  Join us for the conversation here on Crazy Faith Talk!