Before Christianity... before Judaism..

[junkyardboy]

sure we do
its the mary worship of the catholic church
some jews have lilith

Who was Lilith?

i'm not sure i can post links
she was supposed to be adams wife before eve.
hope this helps
google for more info

[Confused Ape]

Lilith started off as one of the Lilitu who were Sumerian demons.
Lilith The Demoness

[EGross]

The introduction of Lilith into Jewish mythology occurred in the middle ages by a lesser known Rabbi who took the only occurrence of it in scripture, which was interpreted to mean a dark carnivorous bird, and created a second creation story just from that. He obvious got it from some other sources, so perhaps the other Lilith-like stories inspired him. He claims that Lilith was expelled for wanting the dominate position during intercourse, so she got to be the mother of shaydim (demons) While most Jews don't even know about her, she is a symble for Jewish Feminism by one particular group that created a magazine of the same name.

[Confused Ape]

While most Jews don't even know about her, she is a symble for Jewish Feminism by one particular group that created a magazine of the same name.

She's also been adopted as one of the faces of the Dark Goddess in some versions of Wicca.

Charges Of The Dark Goddess

[EGross]

I stand corrected, there is a slightly earlier work, around the 12th century (Midrash Rabba Bamidbar 16:25) that has one sentence mentioning that character:

Another exposition: [Moses talking to god who wants to destory the Jews]: "Do not do it, that the nations of the world may not regard you as a cruel Being and say: 'The Generation of the Flood came and He destroyed them, the Generation of the separation came and He destroyed them, the Sodomites and the Egyptians came and He destroyed them, and these also, whom he called My son, My firstborn (Exodus 4:22), He is now destroying! Like that Lilith who, when she finds nothing else, turns upon her own children, so because HaShem was not able to bring this people into the land... He has slain them’ "

Apparently, she eats her young!

[John V]

It is curious that there are references within both the Old and New Testament to Egyptian "wisdom". Here is an example from the Book of Acts.

Acts 7: 20-22

20. At this time Moses was born, and he was extremely beautiful. For three months he was nursed in his father’s house;

21. but when he was exposed, Pharaoh’s daughter adopted him and brought him up as her own son.s

22. Moses was educated [in] all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in his words and deeds.

No, I don't find it at all curious that someone raised in an Egyptian pharaoh's household was educated in the wisdom of the Egyptians. It's not surprising at all.

[EGross]

If the story is true, then the Pharoah would be the living representative of a deity (could be Thoth for that period), and all of his attendants would be priests, and if the "grandson" lived there, that would be the primary teachers. That connection, by the way, to such practices, gave the Jewish sages a lot of headaches.

[Brian37]

Here is an interesting little video. Inside one of the oldest known pyramid in Egypt are engravings of the Egyptian religion that proceeded Judaism.

Apologists would argue that since there is no direct connection to prove interaction between cultures then this would not apply.

The counter to that is simple. Think about all the people you meet once, just once in your life. You don't keep a record of all the people you meet.

Plus this forgets the overlap over multiple cultures over thousands of years. It is like telling a story in a circle and by the time it gets back to you it is completely different. However, in the case of history you are dealing with several circles over thousands of years, like a mesh chain divers suit. The link on the top is connected to two or three other links, but by the time you get to the bottom of the mesh chain suit the links at the top are not connected to the bottom directly.

I don't know when this video was made, but I have argued for years that the motifs in the Egyptian era as far as souls and judgement of the dead, are far more than proof that humans simply pass down stories and other groups change those stories and pass them on to other groups.

The Temple of Luxor is the oldest known "mother and child" motif depicting Isis holding the baby Horus.

[Minimalist]

Teti was the founder of the Sixth Dynasty - which lasted roughly 160 years before it collapsed into the economic/political unrest known as the First Intermediate Period. The Pyramid Texts appeared first in the tomb of his immediate predecessor, Unas, last king of the 5th Dynasty. Unas' predecessor, Djedkare, did not fare much better than the others when it came to pyramid building.



Then again, he followed Menkauhor whose "pyramid"



looks like shit, too.

Not to worry because the pyramid of his predecessor, Nyuserre, is pristine...



Oh, wait....it's a piece of shit, as well.

Before him came Neferefre.. who built...



shit, too.

We could go all the way back to Userkaf who founded the 5th Dynasty

and his pyramid looks like all the rest.



The last king of the 4th dynasty, Shepsekaf didn't rule long enough to build a pyramid but he followed Menkaure who is alleged to have built the last Giza pyramid.



Small, but perfect. So throughout the 5th and 6th Dynasties the kings kept building pyramids but if we accept the story line put out by Egyptologists it looks like they lost the secret all on their own. These dynasties lasted for long periods of time ( unlike the rapid political changes apparent in the First Intermediate Period) and are not indicative of a nation in any great distress.

[EGross]

Having visited Egypt (never, EVER, go into a pyramid, crawling down a long stone shaft, with someone in front of you who has clausterphobia!) I spent time with an Egyptologist who wants to somehow link history with the Exodus book. While some of it is obviously forced, he indicated that if you could just push the story a couple of centuries, there was an Pharoah "Tuthmosis" (or Mosis of the god Thoth") and that when he died, his wife became regent while their son grew up and until he was old enough to take over. The Egyptologist speculated that this would have been the perfect point in the story to have the baby Hebrew brought in and raised, and was called "Mose" (a ש in Hebrew can have a "S" or "SH" sound) because he was made part of the family "Mosis".

Not a bad story. But it's still a story and there is no tablet found that says "Let it be known that a baby was found and brought into the palace". He also showed me a table, that he said translated to "I found a people named Israel and destroyed them." And he also told me that much of what was written was propaganda, since while we know much of Egyptian successes, their failures are rarely written down.