But that episode makes no mention of other gods. It refers to the powers of clever human beings who have mastered certain arts and crafts of production. Nothing in either the Hebrew or Greek version implies that other gods were involved.
The implication was that the Aaronâs power to change a staff into a snake came from God, so then the magic from the other magicians must have come from a different god.
Still, one of my favorite animated musical numbers is Youâre Playing With the Big Boys Now from Prince of Egypt.
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No, that does not follow in logic, and it certainly doesnât follow from the grammar/vocabulary of the passage in Greek or Hebrew. Regarding the logic, youâre inferring a parallel regarding the source of the unusual events, and the inference has no basis. Thereâs no reason in principle why some marvelous events couldnât be produced by God and other such events produced by human knowledge. (If a few years down the road, it was reported that scientists had produced life in a test tube, and the discovery checked out, would you infer that the scientists had the help of some non-Biblical god? Why then would Pharaohâs wise men, who were experts in what passed for science those days, have needed the help of a god to do what they did?) And thereâs nothing in the philology of the passage to suggest that the Egyptian wise men made use of anything more than human sciences and arts.
Youâd have a stronger case if you could find passages where a pagan non-Israelite prays to another god for aid, and the god in fact delivers the requested miracle. Can you find any such passages?
No kiddingâŚ
What passed for science is changing sticks into snakes? That is certainly straining the definition. No, the Pharaohâs men were priests of the Egyptian gods. The whole point of the story is that the God of Abraham is stronger than the Egyptian gods, because his snake ate theirs. Changing a stick into a snake requires some kind of supernatural power, and Iâm pretty sure the writers of the bible knew that it wasnât a usual thing that anyone could do.
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Natural science as we know it did not exist in Egyptian times, but ancient Egypt was one of the great centers of knowledge about the world â knowledge of substances and bodies and herbs and medicines and many other things. The boundaries between âmagicâ and âscienceâ were less clear then. Astrology and astronomy were tied together, and chemistry and alchemy, and it was a very common belief in the ancient world that living things (such as flies) could emerge from non-living matter. An Egyptian âwise manâ could be a mixture of many things â court physician, druggist/alchemist, herbal medicine expert, and so on. That such wise men might be able to produce marvelous transformations would be in line with the image of Egypt as a treasury of ancient wisdom.
Please tell me which Hebrew or Greek terms justify the translation âpriests of the Egyptian Godsâ.
Thatâs the thesis T. aquaticus is trying to prove, but your mere repetition of that thesis does not add any strength to the claim.
But it doesnât necessarily require a âsupernaturalâ power; just an uncommon knowledge of the secrets of nature. Youâre presuming a boundary between âsupernaturalâ and âmarvelously cleverâ that would not have been clear to an ancient Israelite writer in the days when terms like âscienceâ, ânaturalâ, and âsupernaturalâ had not acquired their current meanings.
As for the last part of your sentence, it is obviously true, but the most learned wise men of the Egyptian court are not just âanyoneâ. I donât know anyone in my neighborhood â mechanic, florist, English teacher, secretary, accountant, etc. â who can mix two clear liquids and instantly produce a blue solution. Why, that would have to be magic! That would have to be supernatural! But no, because my first-year Chemistry prof could do it, and last I heard, he neither had supernatural powers nor was a priest of Egyptian gods.
Iâm not contesting that the point of the story was to show that Mosesâs God was greater than all the scientific or magical arts of the Egyptians. Iâm contesting only the claim that the story is about a contest between gods. Thereâs nothing in the text that suggests that; T. aquaticus is reading into it what he thinks must be there. And itâs not the first time he has done this. He regularly reads into the writings of Michael Behe assertions that Behe never makes, but that T. aquaticus is sure Behe is thinking.
Symmetry of that sort is a basic principle of fairy tales. Without an explicit explanation in the text of how Pharaohâs wizards were able to do their tricks, I would suggest that itâs the default meaning, particularly when Godâs snake whups theirs. Turning water into wine would be construed as a miracle, wouldnât it? Or would that be considered âwhat passed for scienceâ?
Preserved for posterity.
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Even if so, the decision that the Exodus story should be classed as âfairy taleâ is itself in need of justification. (I assume you are using âfairy taleâ to indicate a particular literary genre.)
Iâm extremely careful about imputing âdefault meaningsâ to ancient texts, especially when they are often produced by the thought-pattern of the modern reader. Probably you and everyone here at one time or another saw the 1956 Ten Commandments with those statues of Egyptian gods in some scenes, and that is perhaps shaping your interpretation and Aquaticusâs. But while the movie has a âgodsâ theme, this particular Biblical episode does not mention the gods. And this is striking in that itâs a place where one would think that if the author had that theme in mind, he would draw it out explicitly; elsewhere in the Bible, it is made explicit, e.g., in the story about Mt. Carmel.
Yes, but the issue is not whether what the wizards did can be construed as a âmiracleâ. In the Latin sense of miraculum, it surely was a âmiracleâ or âwonderâ or âinexplicable eventâ that the Pharaohâs men produced. The causality, however, is not established in the story. (I once saw an immigrant from the islands, brought up to do temporary labor as a fruit-picker, stand in stunned silence when he went to open the door of a store and it opened automatically for him. He clearly had not seen this before, and he had no clue what âwizardryâ was behind it, but he would have been wrong to conclude that some divine being or ghost was responsible.)
My point is a narrow one: the episode is not cast as a contest between Egyptâs gods and Israelâs God, when it could easily have been. You have introduced the notion of âpriestsâ, which implicitly involves the gods, but the word for âpriestsâ is not used in the passage in either the Hebrew or the Greek. The wizards may have been priests as well as wizards, but we arenât told that. The Greek version uses words like âsophistaiâ (wise men) and âpharmakoiâ (masters of drugs or medicines). The suggestion is of people who spend their time not praying and sacrificing, but studying or fiddling around with nature. Thatâs why I think the passage is about âscienceâ or âmagicâ rather than Egyptian religion.
It doesnât affect the overall message: Israelâs God is more powerful than the wisest and most powerful people in the greatest scientific/technological power of the ancient world, and that makes Israelâs God pretty impressive. Iâm just urging cautious about exegesis, just as you would urge caution if a non-biologist was reading too much into a recent biological discovery whose meaning you knew to be more ambiguous than the non-biologist assumed.
It should be obvious. You canât believe itâs intended as literal history, can you? Look at the plagues: all the livestock in Egypt was killed by one plague, and then itâs killed again by the next plague, and again by the next. And then all the crops of Egypt are wiped out by two successive plagues. But weâre supposed to believe that, all their food being gone, the civilization still survived?
Yes, of course. All my thought about Egypt depends on Charlton Heston. Get your hands of me, you damned dirty ape!
Not a bad argument. Still, if you know much about Egypt, you should know that the powerful group in the palace belonged to the priesthood, as did all the scribes and other wise men. Were the writers of Exodus unaware of that?
So youâre saying that Pharaohâs wizards had access to technology that could turn a stick into a snake?
You had sleight of hand as an offramp. Curious that you took that route.
I donât think it would be a surprise that scriptures for one religion would exclude miracles found in another.
At the end of the day, we have a region where different gods were worshipped by different tribes. The God of the Hebrew people was no different. The 10 Commandments doesnât say to not worship other gods because they donât exist. It says worship God instead. The implication is certainly there, even if it isnât supported elsewhere.
Thank you! A rare admission around here.
âEgyptâ was a civilization that lasted for thousands of years, so the generalization is probably not safe. If you limited it to a particular time period, it might be correct, but it would be good if you would specify the time period, and some scholarly sources covering the priesthood during that time period.
Further, even if all wise men did double duty as priests, that wouldnât establish that the wizards were acting in their priestly capacity in this story. Example: I knew a professor of anatomy in a medical school who also happened to be an Episcopalian priest. When you asked him a question about anatomy, he didnât start praying or administering the Lordâs Supper. He talked medical science. Thereâs no evidence that the wise men and druggists called in here were acting in their priestly capacity, as opposed to their capacity as magicians/scientists. If they were acting in their priestly capacity, the Hebrew and Greek could have emphasized that by using terms for âpriests.â
I think we are having a vocabulary problem here. As a religion scholar, when I see the term âpriestâ I think of a class of people with special duties to serve the gods or God. Things priests do include praying, offering sacrifices, maintaining temples, etc. There is no discussion of Egyptian gods or their service in the Exodus passage. The wise men here donât utter any prayers to make the rods turn into snakes. In contrast, in many other stories in the Bible, pagan gods (e.g., Canaanite, Phoenician) are named and brought into the story, as hypothetical rivals to Israelâs God. The ârivalry between godsâ theme, if itâs present in this story, is muted almost beyond recognition.
It depends on who wrote Exodus. If there really was a man Moses who led Israel out of Egypt, and if he also wrote Exodus, then presumably he knew something of the court life of Egypt. But do you think that Moses wrote Exodus? The typical belief of the atheists/agnostics here seems to be that the books were written long after the events, and therefore do not reliably record what happened. If thatâs your conception of the date of the text, then yes, itâs very likely that the Israelite writer would have only a hazy idea of what the Egyptian court was like 100 or 200 or 500 years earlier. Such a writer would probably lean on vague legends about the great technical and medical skills of the Egyptians.
No, Iâm saying that an Israelite writer, especially one writing centuries after the events, might well imagine that they did.
I notice that T. aquaticus, who made the initial claim here, has dropped out of the discussion. I donât know why.
For what time period would it not be safe?
Now youâre really reaching.
What they did is not described, except that they duplicated Aaronâs trick.
Of course not. Do you? You seem very coy about your own ideas here. But you imply that you donât.
It doesnât seem likely that he would think of it as technology. He might think of it as magic. But the only example of the cause of a stick turning to snakes is God doing it. Note that the Egyptians also duplicated the water into blood and the plague of frogs, but they couldnât manage bugs.
The Exodus was a celestial event, not a terrestrial one. The first Passover was not the Angel of Death murdering every Egyptian child and animal all on one night. Instead, it was the âpassing overâ of the spring sun from one zodiacal constellation to another, from Taurus to Aries. This happened 2000 years before the Christian era. The story of Joseph describes the earlier passing over from Gemini to Taurus. A similar Passover occurred when Christianity began which is why Jesus (Pisces) is represented by two fish. Weâre on the verge of another passover. Hopefully this one leaves at least the Western European religion of Christianity behind if not all of them. There is no place for religion in the modern world.
I hesitate to ask, but what is the evidence for these interesting contentions? Or are we just intended to believe you by faith alone?
Incidentally, Jesus is not represented by two fish; heâs represented by one fish. Perhaps you have Christianity confused with Dr. Seuss?
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This is well-known to all ancient near eastern scholars. Iâm not disputing it. I questioned only what you drew from it, which was not based on the text, but on your own ad hoc reasoning.
Agreed.
And thatâs where we disagree. The âimplicationâ is confirmed neither by logic nor by the language of the text. Itâs an idea that occurred to you, but youâre turning a mere possibility into an âimplicationâ, which goes too far. âImplicationâ has a logical force that is not warranted here. You should be speaking about a âpossible interpretationâ of the Biblical language, not an âimplication.â
Iâm not the one who made the historical assertion. You made the historical assertion; you provide the historical evidence. Iâm not saying your claim is false; it could well be true â Iâd just like to see a trained Egyptian historian say it â and in particular, for him or her to say it about the period during which this incident is supposed to have occurred. So, for example, if you think the incident is supposed to have occurred ca. 1450 BC, Iâd like you to give me some sources which describe Egyptian priestly and court life during that period.
Why reaching? I gave you a realistic modern example. What if an ancient priest spent half his time tending to the gods and the other half studying what we would call herbology, chemistry, etc.? Was Pharaoh calling in the priest-scientist in his capacity as priest or scientist? The text says nothing either way, but the actions it describes donât sound particularly priestly to me.
Exactly â which is why I donât see how you can assert that their actions were particularly âpriestlyâ or that they called on Egyptian gods in order to accomplish them.
I have no opinion regarding the date of the Exodus document in the form we have it. I have not studied the question. But if you do have such an opinion, why not share it? For example, if you think this episode was written about 600 BC, then you would be conceding an immense time gap between the purported events and the writing â a gap making it likely that the writersâ conception of ancient Egypt was filled with fancies and hearsay.
Yes, I agree, but my point has been that what we call âtechnologyâ has much in common with magic. Itâs the attempt to use knowledge of nature to achieve desired effects. In our era, we assume âmagicâ is bogus and rely on technology. The distinction was, it seems, much less clear in many earlier eras.
Look at the Magi, from whom we get our word âmagicâ; they may well have been priests of the Persian religion, but they also knew something about the stars, which in those days meant astrology/astronomy in a blurry union. So they knew something of what we would call âscienceâ but also of things that we would call non-science. I would guess that ancient Egyptian âalchemistsâ knew something of what we would call chemistry but also of a set of âmagicalâ associations between substances and the heavens, substances and human souls, etc. Their conception of nature, of reality, being different from ours, it is not at all surprising that their conception and vocabulary re philosophers, scientists, technologists, magicians, wizards, etc. would not answer exactly to ours.
Those examples actually support my case. If by human arts they could produce organic substances like blood or frogs, why is it inconceivable that human arts could turn sticks into snakes? It appears the arts of Egypt (in the story, anyway) were capable of producing the organic from the inorganic. And again, the gods of Egypt arenât mentioned in the episodes you cite, nor are priests.
No; in Exodus 7:11-12 the wizards of Egypt do it as well, and no god/God is credited as the cause.
The logic is pretty obvious. If there were no other gods then no other gods could be put before the Hebrew God. If a wife tells her husband not to cheat on her with other women it is implied that there are other women.
I guess we will just have to disagree on this one.
The story of Jesus is an allegory in which Jesus is a metaphor for the sun making a one year journey through the zodiac. The disciples represent the twelve signs of the zodiac as do the twelve tribes of Israel. Jesus begins his journey in Aquarius with John the water-bearer. Next he meets the two FISHerman who represent Pisces. You can follow Jesus through the other signs as well.
This story begins in Genesis. The tree in the garden is the Celestial Pole and the serpent is the Draconis constellation. This is reflected in very ancient Egyptian art. This art represented the age of Gemini when Draconis was centered on the Celestial Pole about 6600 BCE. So defining the serpent that lurks about the tree is rather simple. This is the constellation that occupied the celestial polar region at the time. I recently listed a bunch of books that make the case for the astrological basis of the biblical narratives. Trying to find this information on the Internet can get your computer infected. It doesnât take much to figure out who tampered with these sites and why.
No such thing as a priest-scientist. There would be a priest-scribe, but the two jobs would not be considered separate. I would assume that you knew something about ancient Egypt. Am I wrong? Iâm also not sure what actions you would or would not consider priestly.
Itâs all by analogy with Aaron. He didnât call on his god, at least not out loud. Neither did they.
I donât think magic is about knowledge of nature, though the point about astrology may be reasonable. Still, the stars were able to predict because some god set it up that way, so itâs still appeal to gods, whether Jahweh or Ormadz.
If. Who says it was by human arts? Have you ever tried to make a frog?
Thatâs known as assuming the consequent.