2000 Years Prior to the 10 Commandments
- Thread starter ChrisKnight06
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i had never heard of this before and its actually pretty cool. i think its safe to say you didnt need the *
The Egyptians gave us the 42 Laws of Ma'at
Why did Moses dumb it down? *
This is one theological theory:
God placed angels to directly oversee other nations and he kept Israel to be overseen directly by himself. Those angels were considered Gods by those people. For example, the bible makes reference to the god of persia aka the prince of persia and the Canaanite or Egyptian Gods. They were intended to rule over those countries but to do his will in that oversight. Some of those angels decided to revolt against God and be the ultimate authority over their respective countries. In the scenario you posted, it would be consistent with that theory to say that the God of Egypt was giving a more detailed version of the 10 commandments to his people in service of Gods will. Perhaps this angel was one of the better ones and that is why God had Joseph and the Israelites taken there. We know the Canaanite gods were pretty nasty at this point but maybe the Egyptian God was still not rebelling.
Of course its inconsequential, but kind of fun to think about.
https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2014/01/the-bibles-many-gods
Here is a pretty condensed article on that theory
Here is a pretty condensed article on that theory
Christian mythology borrowed a ton from Egyptian mythology. Look up Horus compared to Jesus.
Horus supposedly:
Ancient cults borrowed heavily from one another, Christianity is no different.
Horus supposedly:
- Was conceived by a virgin mother named Meri, and had a stepfather named Seb (Joseph)
- Was born in a cave, his birth announced by an angel, heralded by a star and attended by shepherds
- Attended a special rite of passage at the age of twelve and there is no data on the child from the age of 12 to 30
- Was baptized in a river at the age of 30, and his baptizer was later beheaded
- Had 12 disciples
- Performed miracles, exorcized demons, raised someone from the dead, walked on water
- Tons more
Ancient cults borrowed heavily from one another, Christianity is no different.
There are a lot of extracanonical books attributed to the apostles but when the early church complied written texts they felt that if a book contains something not corroborated by other books then it may not be divinely inspired or that when they made it to text then parts of the story changed for unknown reasons. Not surprisingly, the Gospel of John received the most debate of the 4 gospels but due to the age of the text and its consistency with other things that John wrote in writing style it was included. The interesting part of Matthew and Luke's inclusion is that they are considered to have been inspired by Mark (gospel of Peter, essentially) and another unknown gospel referred to as the "q" document.
John Peter, and James are the only original apostles whose books are directly considered to be penned by them. Matthew may have been written by him directly but by the time its current form came about its possible that it was just oral history that someone else put into text later. Paul wasnt exactly an apostle in the context of what you are suggesting. Jude could have been either Judas or Thomas but its unknown. I tend to lean towards the idea that it was Thomas (thomas Judas didymous).
This would be more interesting if the entire basis of the theory didnt come from the 19th century and hieroglyphics actually told that story. But they don't, its just a theory that came from a poem written by an amatuer egyptologist 2000 years after christ.
Lmao this post shows a gross misunderstanding of the gospels. They were written 40 to 100 years after Jesus' death, and not by eye witnesses.
yes i am aware of the council of nicea. so many books didnt make the official cannon. then you have versions of the bible in sudan that have several hundred other books included.
Mark was written within 20 years of the death of Jesus, probably sooner because the author is a contemporary of Peter. John was likely written between 50 and 70 AD. Matthew and Luke came a little bit later.
Another pretty good discussion here. I have been encouraged lately by some actual good debate in the cooler rather than our what had become normal shit slinging
No one knows the exact date obviously but it's pretty clear there was a large gap between Jesus death and their writing. To argue this is absurd.
To be fair lots of history books etc are written well after . The most difficult thing with the bible from a historical standpoint imo is the multiple translations. The overall broad accounts and messages line up but lots of specific events vary with respect to details
I particularly enjoy the books that the Ethiopian church accepts as canon, particularly the gospel of Thomas. It does seem that at Nicea, the church heads had a political interest in maintaining the idea that Peter was the leader of the first church and may be why they excluded the gospel of thomas and the books that James authored: they bring question to that idea. It seems to me, based on Acts and Galatians that its more likely that either James was actually the first "pope", or that James, Peter, and Paul were all generally on the same level of leadership and authority. If the church had given credibility to either of those theories then it would have undermined the political structure that the church had developed
They mostly line up, because the council of nicea removed the major contradictory books. Still plenty of contradictions are still in there.
Interesting, I'll have to check out these other books. I too thought the OG was too Peter specific.
I'm sure there was a gap, but for both Mark and John the gap isn't terribly wide. And quite honestly, it would have seemed pretty weird if the first course of action for a fisherman was to write the stuff down. The gospel was spread orally in the immediate aftermath to local regions. Just the simple fact that Pauls letter to the Galatians came around 49AD and by this time the church was growing based on the gospel should tell us that within 15 years the word had spread pretty quickly. Whether those churches were cropping up based on oral communication or written text makes your point irrelevant.
The Gospel of Thomas is basically just a collection of sayings from Jesus, so you'll have to find your own interpretation to some of it as it is kind of like the parables. The biggest issue the church had with it is that it directly names James the Just (jesus brother) as the leader of the church after jesus is gone.
The infant gospel of james is interesting because it is the basis of the immaculate conception of Mary, which the catholic church holds fast to but they only consider the book to be extracanonical.
There are also gospels attributed to Mary Magdalene, Pontius Pilate, and Judas Iscariot but to me those seem to be more works of fiction.
The church that I spent the majority of my time at for 20 years is tied to a college that has a huge bible department. Due to that, I've had a lot of time spent in bible classes with career biblical scholars. One of the most interesting series that we did was based on the accuracy of interpretation between Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, and English. Not surprisingly, there are words in each respective language that dont have a direct translation to the others. For example, the word "brother" in English can mean an actual familial brother or a term for someone that a person feels is spiritually close to them. In Hebrew or Greek, it can mean a familial brother, a cousin, a step brother, or a neighbor.
So when James is referred to as the brother of Jesus, which one is it?
Another example is "rock". In the english version, Jesus says to Peter "you are a ROCK, AND on this rock I will build my church". In greek, its closer to saying "you are a PEBBLE, BUT on this rock I will build my church".
So in one transliteration you would immediately assume that Jesus is making Peter the head of the church. In the other, he is referring to Peter as being something smaller than what he is building his church on.
It's almost as if there is a common theme to threads that turn them into crap slinging personal attack filled shit shows
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