Everything we know about God and His continual interventions in the world is based on the Bible. However, there are different interpretations and exegeses on how to read the Bible. Some Biblical scholars are keen to explain everything in the Bible as a metaphor, while others warn that the Bible should be read just as it is, with a historical underlay of people who wrote it. If they were divinely inspired, as the Holy Tradition of Christianity argues, then why would we consider everything as a metaphor?
The Biblical scholars are very focused on the usage of words in the scriptures. Let us look at some of these words and try to reason what stands behind them.
It seems that the rod or staff is intimately connected to the rock. In the Old Testament, Moses uses the rod to make miracles. Rod comes almost out of nowhere, and it just happens to be in Moses’ hands. It is also important to acknowledge that Moses had an intimate relationship with God, who talked to him from a bush that seemed to burn but without fire (Exodus 3: 2-4). This description may be understood almost as a portal or as a screen through which God communicates. The rod, furthermore, has extraordinary powers beyond comprehension even in today’s terms. It causes plagues in Egypt (Exodus 7: 9-11), parts the Red Sea (Exodus 14: 20-22), and makes water pour out of a rock (Exodus 17:3-6/Numbers 20:7-11). There is something particular about this rod because if Moses was capable to do such things or to channel the divine power bestowed upon him, the rod would not be necessary. We may then ask if the rod was indeed from this world or is it a tool from outside of this world.
On the other hand, rock has many features that are completely incomprehensible. It pours the water out when touched by Moses’ rod, as we have seen above. When angels’ staff is used, rock produces fire to cook food (Judges 6:20-22); rock pours out rivers of oil (Job 29:6). How may we perceive such rock from the ancient perspective? It would have looked something like a rock, but it is not. It seems this thing has a capacity to store liquid and fire or may just produce it as a simulated thing. Furthermore, these rocks have an interior. One can enter a rock, whereby the ancient Hebrew word for rock is not the same as for the cave (Isaiah 2:10). There are inhabitants of the rock (Isaiah 42:11), and the rock even has secret stairs (Solomon 2:14). Is the rock, therefore, a connection between two worlds, a kind of portal that opens to other realms or a conductor that leads out of simulation?
The New Testament is very intriguing about the rock. Not only Joseph of Arimathea builds the rock in one day (Matthew 27:59-60), but he builds it for a particular purpose. It is obvious that the tomb within a rock/cave cannot be carved out in a single day, so it must have been already created interior. Jesus is laid there, but he resurrects and disappears only to reappear later. How is it done, the Bible does not say. However, the ancient people did understand that Jesus’ body was put there to rest and it had guards and a huge stone was put at the entrance. Something must have happened in the rock and this mysterious place also had an ability to hide or teleport Jesus in the flesh from inside the rock back to our world.
For an omnipotent God, everything is possible. But Jesus conveys that through prayer and belief everything is possible for us too. The question of reality and the fundamental ontology of things comes into question here. If something is fundamental, meaning it cannot be anything else but that particular thing, then the logic suggests that the reality of things does not allow these things to be anything else but its fundamental. If a mountain is a well-known physical group of soil, wood, and rocks, then it is very improbable it would move. But if it moves, as Jesus suggests it can, then it is either not a mountain (rather a simulation) or our perceptions of the real world are completely false. Asking us to believe (Mark 11:23-24) is not proving things. We may be asked to believe in a magic trick, and we cannot explain it, but it is still an illusion, a simulation. A belief is beyond possibility to comprehend, beyond reasoning.
Lastly, Bible tells us a lot about dreams. It seems that people are in a constant process of dreaming, while birth is considered to be an entrance into the matrix where we dream (Exodus 29:7; Job 20:8; Psalms 73:20). We should be aware not to connect these thoughts immediately with the movie Matrix, as dreaming may also be considered how the ancient Semites understood ontological existence. However, dreaming seems very easy, it is a state of being that can exist at one moment and be lost in another. The wicked ones will be gone as a dram (Isaiah 29:7), while the angels who left their habitation are filthy dreamers (Jude 1:6-8). If we consider it really a dream in comparison to the real world (whatever it may be), then we live (or dream) in a simulation. Dreams are altered states of consciousness, felt inner awareness. If we look at the structures of dreams, we see they are different from thoughts and images we have during awake stages, but while we dream, we remember them as believing they are absolutely true, even if they are the most bizarre things and intensely visual. It is often about things that happened to us in the last few days, but it doesn’t play out as it did in our experience. Recalling the dreams as an important way how God speaks to us in the Bible, we may also consider parts of the human brain as a connecting point with the simulation.
