Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: AndyTheBear
Interesting that you should put it that way. Remember Dan. 2:33? The feet of Nebuchadnezer's image were "part of iron, part of clay."

I liked your profile, btw. Even though I am not an emergent evolutionist, I trow we are probably closer to being on the same page as not.

I interpret the 7 days of creation in this fashion:

In order to wean the Israelites away from the idolatry, esp the heliolatry, of the Egyptians, Moses explained the 7 ritual days of the New Year's festival in light of strict monotheism. Thus, there is the Hebrew tohu wabohu, "without form and void", but it is not equivalent to the boundlessness and imperceptibility identified in the Egyptian creation myths as the divine pair Huh and Amun. There is light on the first day, but it is not Atum-Re. There is water but the water is not divine like the Egyptian god Nun and his consort, the goddess Nauhet. There is a separation of the primal waters from the primordial mound of earth, but Atum-Re does not sit upon it and call forth the four frogs and the nine Enneads, who, in turn, are responsible for further acts of creation. In Moses' account, the sun disk is not Aton-Re, but merely one of the heavenly bodies. Man is created by YHVH-Elohim out of the dust of the earth, but he is not fashioned by the ram-god Khnum on a potter's wheel.

I think my interpretation of the 7 days of creation does justice to the text, and does not fall into the trap of a literalism that cannot be sustained by the evidence of modern science. The timeline of the Archbishop Ussher, favored by many evangelicals, falls apart even under a cursory examination of the archaeological evidence. A flood occuring c.2400 B.C. would have obliterated any evidence of the archaeological record for Egypt prior to then, yet that record is relatively intact and unbroken from the Fayum (c. 5000 B.C.) through the proto-dynastic (3100 B.C.), Old Kingdom (2400 B.C.), all the way to the present--one continuous, unbroken record of cultural development.
21 posted on 04/23/2008 5:17:43 PM PDT by attiladhun2 (Obama is the anti-Reagan, instead of opposing the world's tyrants, he wants to embrace them)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies ]


To: attiladhun2
The feet of Nebuchadnezer's image were "part of iron, part of clay."

You got my allusion. My best guess is the toes of the statue are the various peoples that the roman empire broke into pretty much centered around Europe et al.

Interesting take on the creation story, but I must confess to knowing little to nothing of Egyptian mythology. Perhaps I can justify your effort to teach me by looking into it, but I make no guarantees at this point. My day job has me busy and so does my family.

32 posted on 04/23/2008 9:20:59 PM PDT by AndyTheBear (Disastrous social experimentation is the opiate of elitist snobs.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 21 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson