(November 9, 2018 at 3:15 pm)Bucky Ball Wrote:Quote:Either way, we see the LORD teaches Pharaoh a lesson, showing him who's really God. And to the ancient Israelites, this would've been one illustration among many of how powerful and mighty God is compared to other men and gods, and thereby a reminder that only the LORD was worthy of worship.
There is not a shred of evidence that anyone in Egypt was "taught" a lesson ... anytime, anywhere.
Egypt was and remained a polytheistic culture.
There is no evidence of large numbers of Jews in Egypt, or that at and one point, they left. A large number of Jews leaving Egypt :
a. would have impacted the economic system .. and there would be some record of the event. There isn't.
b. Egypt controlled the entire Near East. It makes no sense to go from one place Egypt controlled to another place they controlled.
Israel was never a monotheistic culture. After the Exile, they slowly moved towards monotheism, as the concept of "individualism" replaced
the tribal-family structures, and their prophets insisted on the worship of (only) one god. It was a very late development.
Statues and images of Ashera, (Yahweh's consort/wife) whom they worshipped alongside Yahweh, have been found in sites such as Dan, Beth-El, and Jerusalem.
"In a 1975 excavation at Kuntillet 'Ajrud (Horvat Teman) in the Sinai Desert, a pottery ostracon was inscribed "Berakhti et’khem l’YHVH Shomron ul’Asherato" ("I have blessed you by Yahweh of Samaria and [his] Asherah"). Beneath the words are drawings of a tree and of a cow with a calf. Nearby is a drawing of a "tree of life" flanked by two ibexes. A second reference to "YHVH and [his] Asherah" was identified in an inscription on a building wall. An similar reference has been found at Khirbet el-Qom, near Hebron, where an inscription reads "Blessed be Uriyahu by Yahweh and by his Asherah; from his enemies he saved him!"
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entr...e_Feminine
We know the Hebrews were not monotheistic. They were monolateralists. They acknowledged many gods, ... the covenant was that in return for help in their battles, they would ONLY worship the (Babylonian) god of the armies (the "lord of hosts" ... a "host" is a battle formation).... Yahweh Sabaoth.
Christians are not monotheists. The Trinity is not a concept consistent with monotheism, and no Jew would acknowledge anyone having equivalence to Yahweh.
Jesus in no way asserted equivalence to the Father. He even said there were things the Father knew, that he didn't, and that he had to do what he was told by the Father .. NO WAY that is an "equal" being.
"According to the later account in 2 Chronicles, Josiah destroyed altars and images of pagan deities in cities of the tribes of Manasseh, Ephraim, "and Simeon, as far as Naphtali" (2 Chronicles 34:6–7), which were outside of his kingdom, Judah, and returned the Ark of the Covenant to the Temple."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josiah
you are about 900 years head of the discussion. nothing you have said here applies to one scrap of what was said. what's more???? Your not even smart enough to know this... but hey, you spelled everything perfectly which means you are smart, to people like you... and in the end that all that should matter to you!