(March 4, 2020 at 4:41 am)WinterHold Wrote: The brazen bull is an ancient torture method that includes the "roasting of the victim" to death inside a "bronze" bull. The bull made a sound when the victims start to scream from the pain.
It was claimed to be invented by the ancient Greeks by Diodorus Siculus, recounting the story in Bibliotheca historica :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazen_bull
But the sound produced by the bull does open a new theory to me when looking at this ancient passage from the Quran:
Quote:Sura 7, The Quran:
https://quran.ksu.edu.sa/index.php?l=en#...rans=en_sh
( 148 ) And the people of Moses made, after [his departure], from their ornaments a calf - an image having a lowing sound. Did they not see that it could neither speak to them nor guide them to a way? They took it [for worship], and they were wrongdoers.
The bible has a similar story; but it never mentions the "lowing sound". The brazen bull is unique for its sound; just like the mentioned calf is unique for its sound.
Burnt offerings were claimed by the bible to be "offered" for the calf. So were they put inside it; and it is the origin of the brazen bull ? but instead of "offerings" people were put inside later by the Greeks ?
Burnt offerings in the Bible were generally made on an altar in the open air inside the Temple, there's no suggestion that they were made inside a bronze bull.
I think the differences in the 'golden calf' story in the Bible and the Quran are the result of sloppy plagiarism, nothing more. Additionally, stories about the brazen bull as a torture device had been around for more than six hundred years before Mohammed got round to commercial religion - it's entirely possible that he'd heard about it and incorporated the 'lowing sound' into his book.
Boru
‘I can’t be having with this.’ - Esmeralda Weatherwax
