Exodus and Deuteronomy

Chapter 10. The Birth, Early Life, and Commission of Moses: A Reading from Post-Handover Hong Kong

139 Sonia Kwok Wong ChAPtEr 10 the Birth, Early Life, and Commission of Moses A Reading from Post-Handover Hong Kong The exodus story has been reinterpreted and reappropriated in numerous ways by different groups in accordance to their own interests. Although it was written and set in specific cultural, political, and social contexts that are drastically different from ours, the story seems to be able to engage modern readers of different social locations. In particular, the motifs on domination /subjugation, oppression/liberation, diasporic experience, and ethnic identification were inviting to readers with a (post-)colonial history, to whom these thematic elements have been a vivid part of their living reality. A part of this paper, in particular the exegetical work on Exod. 2:1–4:18, is extracted and modified from my M.Div. thesis, written in 2008,1 in which I employed a narrative approach to rhetorical criticism, in conjunction with the social-value model, to assess the embedded ideologies and persuasiveness of the commission narrative of Moses as rhetoric for the Babylonian Diaspora in the late sixth century bce.2 While this paper deals with the same narrative, here Moses’ birth, early life, and commission are read from the 1. Sonia Kwok Wong, “The Commission of Moses in Exodus 3:1–4:18: Rhetoric to the Babylonian Diaspora” (Master’s thesis, The Chinese University of Hong Kong). 2. Revisiting the thesis after two years, I must admit that some of the views that I once held regarding the history of Israel were no longer found tenable. However, this does not undermine the exegetical results carried out on Exod. 2:1–4:18, nor enervate the overall strength of my thesis. 140 Exodus and Deuteronomy post-handover context of Hong Kong. I delineate an intersection between the hybridities of the Hong Kong people and Moses. The flow of this article is as follows. (1) I will outline the situation of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) in its first decade, in particular highlighting the Hong Kong indigenous identity, the particular hybridity of the Hong Kong people in relation to the mainlandization and recolonization of HKSAR. The reality is definitely more complex than my concise presentation; however, it serves the purpose of giving the reader a general picture of the political milieu of Hong Kong in the recent decade. (2) Through an exegetical study on Exod. 2:1–4:18 I will show how the narrative advocates the preponderance of the so-called “primordial identity” through Moses’ precarious ethnic and social identification with the Hebrews and how this ideology is undermined by Moses’ hybridity, a quality that makes Moses yhwh’s irreplaceable agent. Finally, (3) I will relate the narrative to the post-handover context of Hong Kong and argue for a resistant reading. Due to the strong similarity between the identity issues of the Hong Kong people and Moses, Hong Kong people must avoid overidentification with the story, which advocates the paramount importance of “authentic roots.” Post-Handover Hong Kong and the Indigenous Identity of Hong Kong People The Decolonization of Hong Kong Although the colonial domination of British territorial control came to an end with the handover of Hong Kong’s sovereignty to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1997, colonialism nevertheless seems to be disguised in another form. The decolonization of Hong Kong is distinctively different from other once-colonized countries in Asia. First, the general populace of Hong Kong had never invited decolonization or its retrocession because they were content with the unprecedented economic prosperity and social order maintained by the colonial government.3 Second, the process of decolonization, 3.AtelephonesurveyconductedinMarch1982successfullyinterviewed998HongKongChinese over the age of twenty; results indicated 70 percent of the interviewees preferred to maintain the status quo of Hong Kong. After 1997, 15 percent wished that Hong Kong be maintained as a “trust territory,” and only 4 percent favored a takeover by the Chinese government. The survey did not indicate the reasons for their preference (see Y. R. Wong 1999: 35–36). 141 The Birth, Early Life, and Commission of Moses including democratization, was initiated and carried out by the colonial government , not by the once-colonized, in the mid-1980s. Third, unlike many Asian countries that regained their independence after decolonization, Hong Kong was expected to rejoin China in 1997 as an autonomous special administrative region of the PRC for at least fifty years, under the rubric...