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St Francis Magazine Vol 8, No 2 | April 2012 14:13). 105 Abraham passed from Ur to Canaan, Moses and the Hebrews from Egypt to Canaan via the Red Sea and the desert, and new covenant Hebrews from death to life and from the kingdom of Satan to the Kingdom of God (Col 1:13-­‐14). The Apostle Paul describes the corporate drowning by the Hebrews to the old, as it were, with the words, they were “baptized into Moses” (I Cor 10:2) at the Red Sea crossing. The words of Mircea Eliade describing baptism underscore this ‘death to the old’ motif: “In water, everything is ‘dissolved,’ every ‘form’ is broken up, everything that has happened ceases to exist; nothing that was before remains after immersion in water…Immersion is the equivalent, at the human level, of death... Breaking up all forms, doing away with the past…..” 106 The break with Egypt is also underscored with the words: “… For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again” (Exodus 14:13). Thus, the separation from Egypt was just as real as the deliverance from their hands was real. However, in reality what happened to the Israelites and the Corinthians was the reality that ‘you can get the slaves out of Egypt…but you can’t get the Egypt out of the slaves....’ They had all tasted of spiritual food and spiritual drink from a spiritual rock, yet it did not seem good enough (I Cor 10:3-­‐4). Thus Stephen in Acts 7:39 reflects on the wilderness experience and comments, “…their hearts turned back to [‘hankered after’-­‐105 See fn #4 in Victor P. Hamilton. The Book of Genesis. Chapters 1-17. NICCOT (Grand Rapids, Mi: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1990), S. 405. 106 This is not a discussion about the method of baptism, i.e. immersion or sprinkling, but its effect on a view of the past. Mircea Eliade. Patterns in Comparative Religion. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996.), p. 194. Also see Paul Gardner who suggests that this baptism was a covenantal act of “separation and group identification” as quoted by Brisio J. Oropeza. Paul and Apostasy: Eschatology, Perseverance and Falling Away in the Corinthian Congregation. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000), p. 104. 240