10 Commandments (remake)

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

Last night,due to being hyped from coffee and blowing out two tyres on my car, I couldn't sleep. Turned on the Teev at 1 am. There was a remake of "The Ten Commandments" with pretty fair CGI. I saw the original with Chucky Heston when I was 11. The whole (Catholic) school went.. Loved it.What can I say? I was 11.

This time I came in on the plagues of Egypt. By the time YHWH killed all the first born Egyptian children,I had concluded he was dead a cunt.(that's a technical Aussie term for a complete arsehole)

I stopped watching after God's chosen people had massacred the Amalachites (?) and the chosen women wondered around the battlefield murdering the wounded with some gusto.

Also,that the (unnamed) Pharaoh was bit of a dickhead.IE some scruffy nutjob comes into my court making DEMANDS of ME, a living god, I'd execute him just for impertinence,or exile him at the very least.


How on earth did such a nasty, vicious little shit such as YHWH come to be Lord of the universe? (that's a rhetorical question)

PS I've been interested in Egyptian history for a long time. I can't remember ever having come across an account of a pharaoh being killed with his entire army, nor of the invasion and conquest of a helpless Egypt which would have followed immediately. The Hyksos invasion was in the eighteenth century bce, centuries (at least two) before the alleged Exodus.

[Minimalist]

The De Mille version is on right now for the idiots.

I wonder what the Playboy channel is running. Has to be better.

[Doubting Thomas]

I saw that movie a long time ago, but to be honest I don't remember much about it now. If I want to watch Chuck Heston, I'd prefer Planet of the Apes which, if you watch the parts about Dr. Zaius carefully, it makes strong arguments against anti-evolutionists and those who would cover up scientific discovery in favor of what's written on ancient scrolls.

[Minimalist]

I can't remember ever having come across an account of a pharaoh being killed with his entire army,

Nor will you. Especially not in the New Kingdom when Egypt reached its peak of imperial power. Egyptian hegemony over Canaan, sporadic from Ahmose to Tuthmoses II was cemented with Tuthmoses III's victory at Megiddo c 1475 BC. From then until c 1150 the Egyptians dominated Canaan and the archaeology on the ground demonstrates this with clear evidence.

Oddly, the fucking bible doesn't seem to know anything about it!

[Gawdzilla]

The things being built in the movie suggest Ramses II, world's greatest egotist. However, the Egyptians keep excruciatingly detailed records and failed to record the Hebrews in their midst. Tens of thousands of slaves went unreported, needed no logistics, no supervisors/overseeers? Doubting that.

[Minimalist]

There is not even a suggestion of mass slavery in Egyptian history, at least not until the Greeks and Romans arrived. Egypt used a corvee labor system in which citizens (most of whom were peasant farmers) were drafted for building projects...usually during the flood period when they couldn't work on the farms anyway.

If I'm not mistaken, it was not until the 19th century that the British finally abolished the practice.

[Cinjin]

darn ... I was hoping 10 Commandments remake meant that you were taking suggestions on rewriting the ten commandments - possibly for the modern age or something.

[Zen Badger]

The things being built in the movie suggest Ramses II, world's greatest egotist. However, the Egyptians keep excruciatingly detailed records and failed to record the Hebrews in their midst. Tens of thousands of slaves went unreported, needed no logistics, no supervisors/overseeers? Doubting that.

But they also failed to record the great flood which happened right in the middle of the old kingdom.

Wait.....

[Minimalist]

darn ... I was hoping 10 Commandments remake meant that you were taking suggestions on rewriting the ten commandments - possibly for the modern age or something.

It's been done.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzEs2nj7iZM

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

the Egyptians keep excruciatingly detailed records and failed to record the Hebrews in their midst.

True enough,but they could also be rather cavalier with facts,as was common with ancient chroniclers. Historical accounts are often about flattery and reputation, as much as any kind of objective record.


Two things spring to mind:

Akenaten 'the great heretic'.Later pharaohs did everything they possibly could to obliterate his memory and his capital,Amarna.

The Battle of Kadesh: there is wonderful monument celebrating Ramses' victory in that battle. The problem is, the battle was a draw,at best.Egypt actually lost territory.

0000000000000000000000000

As for the pharaoh of the alleged exodus. No one knows who he was or when the exodus occurred. I've always found that odd. I think it's reasonable to expect the name of such an important DEFEATED enemy would be recorded. However, the Torah DOES give a time line:

From wikipedia

The Seder Olam Rabbah (ca. 2nd century CE) determines the commencement of the Exodus to 2448 AM (1312 BCE). This date has become traditional in Rabbinic Judaism.[34]

In the first half of the 20th century the Exodus was dated on the basis of 1 Kings 6:1, which states that the Exodus occurred 480 years before the construction of Solomon's Temple, the the fourth year of Solomon's reign. Equating the biblical chronology with dates in history is notoriously difficult, but Edwin Thiele's widely accepted reconciliation of the reigns of the Israelite and Judahite kings would imply an Exodus around 1450 BC, during the reign of Pharaoh Thutmose III (1479-1425 BC)

No record of old Thutty becoming drowned with his entire army.

Recent archeaological evidence has shown pretty conclusively that the pyramids were NOT built by slaves.
Although they had slaves ,Egypt was not a slave dependent society as say Rome:there was no need. There is simply no evidence that Egypt had slaves in the numbers claimed by in the book of Exodus..

I enjoyed the early novels of Christian Jaqc on Ramses the Great (they got a bit silly after that) However,Jacq is a real Egyptologist,trained at the Sorbonne. He claims the Egyptians had indentured workers rather than slaves. This included prisoners of war,who were allowed to assimilate or leave after a set period.

The Torah is largely (partly stolen) oral mythology not written its present form for at at least 500 years.