Where Did the Gold for the Evil Golden Calf Come From



Readers know Moses came down from his personal chat with God somehow carrying stones upon which God had chiseled the Ten Commandments. He saw that his followers were worshipping and celebrating a calf made of gold. For reasons not explained in the Bible, Moses in his anger smashed the stones God had so carefully given him. If God carefully engraved stones with his wishes and gave them to me, I would treat them with great care, knowing they were rules that must be followed for eternal salvation. But not Moses, he just tossed them as if, "Yeah, God gave them to me, but you guys made me so mad I smashed them. It's your fault we don't know what God wrote."

A more peculiar part of the story is the "golden calf." It says in the Bible the gold for the golden calf came from gold earrings worm by the women Jews who had escaped slavery in Egypt. This got me to wondering how bad the slavery was for the Jews in Egypt if they could afford so many golden earrings that once collected, was enough gold to make a statue of a calf? Wouldn't that be a lot of gold, especially for people who had been slaves? 

The scholars I've read conclude there was no slavery of the Jews in Egypt. There is not evidence Jews lived in the desert for forty days, let alone 40 years. A human can walk across that desert in about a week.

The Government of Israel hired an architect and gave him a large budget to find where the Jews spent their 40 years in the desert. He and his staff looked for years and found no evidence. He concluded the story is myth. 

If Irael's government wants to substantiate the story of the Jews as slaves escaping Egypt, they could start  by explaining how the women who were slaves had so much gold jewlry.   

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Talarico Looks Like an Obama II

Image
We all have our ideas about what is good or smart politics. I'm no different. Those who read this blog have to hear mine. My thinking is millions of voters will go to the polls in the next two elections for the specific purpose of voting against Trump. Most of these voters, however, will not admit that is why or how they are voting. They will have convinced themselves they are voting for some reason more idealistic and loftier. An example of what they might say to themselves is, "I'm voting for a better country." The job of Democrats, Libertarians, Socialists and whomever is to give those voters something that ends the sentence, "I'm voting for someone other than a Republican because..."  The sentence will not end in "...I hate Trump." It will be something else. That is what Texas Govitorial Candidate Talarico is doing so well.   Talarico is telling Texans their state is too big and too important to yield to the narrow views of the far right. T...
Read more

Will We Ever Know How Accurate Current Bibles Are

Image
When I discuss the many times the Bible was copied and recopied by scribes over a couple of thousand years, the reply is often, "I have a book by this (or that) expert who says the Bible is 99% accurate to its original writers." The 99% claim appears in various places defending the Bible. There is one thing we know absolutely: There is no surviving original copy of the Bible. Even the oldest surviving material is a generation or two after the time some of the Bible was written. This means no one can claim he has, or ever will, compare the current Bible to the original Bible and find the two are 99% the same. We cannot claim either that it is not 99% accurate. For the sake of discussion, however, assume the current Bible is 99% accurate. That would mean the one word out of every 100 was inaccurate. It could still mean an important misreading of the original text. An example is the passage referring to punishment for a man who kills a fetus. In the oldest know materia...
Read more

Ancient God, Bel (Baal), the Main Character in an Ancient Play

Image
In a British museum is a preserved stone tablet from Babylon. It dates to about 2,000 BCE. Someone labored patiently to inscribe an entire passion play featuring the god Bel. I reiterate this is a stone tablet, not a recopied papyrus. The play begins with the god Bel arrested by soldiers and taken off the stage. He reappears at a trial in the Hall of Judgement. Bel is innocent but is sentenced to death. In the next scene Bel is accosted by a mob. He is despised and rejected. The actor playing Bel is then taken by guard to a hilltop in a sacred grove. Two criminals are taken with him. One of these is released. The the audience then leaves the theater and follows the actor Bel and his guards to the top of a hill where the death scene is enacted by hanging from a tree. The audience returns to the theater for the dramatic final scenes. The dead Bel is stripped and prepared for burial. On a theatrical hill to the side of the stage is a tomb where the body is placed. A stone is rolle...
Read more