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Book of Numbers: Quail!!
Speaker
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Yes, Genesis was long and begat begat begat.
Sure, the second half of Exodus made you want to kill yourself.
Certainly the book of Leviticus bored into your eyes like a parasitic grub, hollowing out your will to live.
The Hebrews haven't even started toward the promise land yet. Moses sits within the womblike tent housing the Ark of the Covenant, making rules about divine butchery and menstration.
But no more. God says "MOVE!". The armies are counted, the camps are struck, the handicapped, retards and lepers are driven out of the tents and slightly more than two million Hebrews are on the move. They must return to the land of milk and honey, like salmon in the spring, or Vulcans crazed by the fierce urging of Pon Farr.
Madness?
THIS IS THE BOOK OF NUMBERS
Sure, the second half of Exodus made you want to kill yourself.
Certainly the book of Leviticus bored into your eyes like a parasitic grub, hollowing out your will to live.
The Hebrews haven't even started toward the promise land yet. Moses sits within the womblike tent housing the Ark of the Covenant, making rules about divine butchery and menstration.
But no more. God says "MOVE!". The armies are counted, the camps are struck, the handicapped, retards and lepers are driven out of the tents and slightly more than two million Hebrews are on the move. They must return to the land of milk and honey, like salmon in the spring, or Vulcans crazed by the fierce urging of Pon Farr.
Madness?
THIS IS THE BOOK OF NUMBERS
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Given that they are only count males, that a utter crapload of armed refugees to show up on your boarder. I'm not surprised at all the typical response was GTFO.
It's also kinda funny that with god killing so many of them, they had negative population growth over like 40 years or whatever.
God: Don't create any graven images
God: Now make a big bronze Snake on a stick.
I guess it's not idolatry if your god tells you to do it. Kinda odd symbolism though. A healing snake on a stick. I'm really not sure about he timeline but it reminds me a lot of the Rod of Asclepius. Probably not an uncommon reaction. Religious symbols tend to be fairly good at getting around I suppose.
The serpent was a symbol of God. (thats why Satan appeared as a serpent in the Garden of Eden because he was trying to trick Adam and Eve. As well the Aztec God quexacoatl was represented by a snake.)
The snake on the staff was a symbol of Christ on the Cross, all they had to do was look to the Cross to be saved. Alot of them thought this was too easy and so they didn't look. They died.
Theres a difference between Graven Images and Symbolism. God didn't want Graven Images because they would worship those statues or images, as if the statue itself was god. The snake on a staff was not worshiped, it was symbolism and forshadowing of Christ's Atonement and Crucifixion.
Arch,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_goGR39m2k
I, uh, am confused.
I have never ever heard of the serpent as a symbol of the Christian God and I would call myself pretty familiar with the Bible.
Also, how could the Israelites seek salvation through Jesus when he didn't even exist at the time? Were the prophecies fortelling his birth even handed down at that point?
I'm totally open to being wrong or even other interpretations of things, so if you have sources for these ideas, I'd love to see them.
Yeah, that guy is just bullshitting you. Both Moses and Jesus do some serious serpent stomping from time to time, and throughout Revelations the devil is referred to as the serpent.
But with the bible being as schizophrenic as it is, it mixes up it's symbolism from time and time and you can find snakes in a lot of places doing lots of different things. Right now it probably is a religious symbol stolen from another culture.
You can't just make shit up, Brian.
But I'm willing to doubt myself and give dude the benefit of the doubt.
Oh and as far as Scripture backing it up, well I have scripture that I believe is scripture which backs it up.
From the Book of Mormon, Helaman, Chapter 8 verses 13 to 15
13 But, behold, ye not only deny my words, but ye also deny all the words which have been spoken by our fathers, and also the words which were spoken by this man, Moses, who had such great power given unto him, yea, the words which he hath spoken concerning the coming of the Messiah.
14 Yea, did he not bear record that the Son of God should come? And as he lifted up the brazen serpent in the wilderness, even so shall he be lifted up who should come.
15 And as many as should look upon that serpent should aive, even so as many as should look upon the Son of God with faith, having a contrite spirit, might live, even unto that life which is eternal.
This is why I love the Book of Mormon, we get awesome true doctrine that others wouldn't have caught.
Oh but hey, if you don't want to believe that, theres also John Chapter 3:14 and 15
14.And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up:
15. That whosever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.
Oh and yes, yes the Jews did believe in Christ, and yes they did look forward to his coming. Unfortunately the lot of them didn't believe that Jesus was THE Christ, but they did look forward to a messiah, or Christ.
Arch,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_goGR39m2k
Because they start the book with a census. They needed to know how many fighting men they had before they went conquering.
In fact, I'm really not cut out to debate religion at all. No reason to post this at all I guess, except to say I wish it were more about the section of history connected with the book of Numbers.
Do what I do and ignore them.
I'd hate for some one who wants to actually talk about this instead of foam at the mouth to leave.
I haven't gotten to Numbers yet. Did we skip the Leviticus thread? I guess I missed it.
As Wikipedia patiently explains, the original symbol of healing was the Rod of Asclepius (one snake), not the Wand of Hermes (two). The shift towards the latter seems to be recent.
That fits with the image from the Book of Numbers even better. And further reinforces the serpent as a symbol of healing. Cool.
OP is comedy gold :^:
man, I'm kind of curious as to what was in the 'bitter water' in 5:11-29, leaving aside my cheerful 'fuck you' to the notion of making a wife risk her life in some stupid ritual because hubby was feeling insecure.
It does sound pretty horrible. If I suspected my wife of cheating on me, there is no way I'd let someone put her through something like that.
It sounds like something out of the Witch Trials. If she drowns, she's a witch. If she lives, she's innocent.
I suppose someone decided it just ought to be skipped?
Heard this story in my Natural History of Invertebrates class, looked it up on some website devoted to parasites. Makes sense to me.
IT SHALL BE FIVE CUBITS
AND THEN TEN CUBITS
For one, the book of mormon is not widely considered to be canon, so let's leave it out of the discussion. Also, there is plenty of criticism on the book, making countless unsupported claims. The Bible has enough of these as is, but is still a tad better supported, so let's not go there.
I think the thing some other posters came to is exactly this. Here, a serpent is the son of man (Jesus, as far as I am aware), whereas in the book of revelations the snake is undoubtedly the devil. One poster aptly called this the 'Schizophrenic' nature of the bible.
Besides, the symbol carries a strong likeness to that of an earlier culture, showing the lack of 'purity' in the bible.
Other than that, the book of numbers is a nice account of the dealings of the Israelites during their trek through the desert. Does anyone know whether this is actually supported by any archeological evidence?
There's sixty-six books in the bible. I'm reading one a week, and I don't want to prolong the project by going back because no one made a thread.
So you could say there is a God = Snake thing.
Of course, the whole staff thing might have been a since covered over symbol of Astarte and the Astarte poles/groves.
So maybe snakes and Astarte are the ones who have the symbolic resonance.
I think Victor J. Stenger adresses it in God: The Failed Hypothesis. If I remember correctly there is absolutely no evidence for the Israelites crossing the desert and yet archaeologists have found evidence for smaller groups of people living in the wilderness for shorter periods of time. I'm not too surprised by this considering that there's very little evidence to support much else in the bible at this point, including the plagues in Egypt, the conquests, the Israeli Empire, or even a King Solomon.
Wow, that's just gross enough to be really awesome.
Err, both the Book of Mormon and John were written after Jesus had already come and done his Son of God thing. Since the forshadowing is only added in by books written after he was around, it is the exact definition of a retcon.
I always just took it as a reciprocation thing, seeing as the Pharaoh's magicians made snakes first, so it's God saying "Mine is bigger" on an even field.
Or it could just be that sticks look like snakes, so they were all high and magically turned their staves into sticks on the ground.
I had thought God taught Moses and Aaron the snake/staff trick before they went in to see Pharoah.
After a while the Hebrews get tired of eating Manna exclusively and complain a little. Apparently they are sad because in Egypt they had cucumbers and fish and garlic and other tasty things and now it's Manna Manna Manna for every meal.
Moses mildly overreacts to this by asking God to kill him if he has to keep leading such worthless people. God get's pissed and says "you want some meat, I'll give you meat until you fucking choke on it! You'll get nothing but meat for a month!" and piles dead quail two cubits high along the path the Hebrews take the next day.
But then the next day when people are enjoying the quail God just get's even angrier, forgets about the making them sick of it by making them eat it for a month thing, and just smites them with a plague.
If I were God I would have rained tasty snack treats down on them by day, and frozen snack treats by night.
There's the bulk of the texts. they're pretty confusing but that site has some guides on how to read them
Could be. You can lead a boy to church, but you can't make him read.
Edit: Indeed, I looked it up and I was utterly wrong.