One of the strangest incidents recounted in the Bible, at least to my modern ears, is when Aaron, brother of Moses, made for the stubborn Israelites a new god to worship—after God had freed the Israelites from Egypt.
Indeed, I visited what once was the splendid National Maritime Museum, in Greenwich - and by God, what a maritime history we have - some 20 years ago, by which time it had already morphed into the National Slavery Museum, with concomitant handwringing exhibits everywhere No mention of the fact that it was us Brits who put and end to the maritime slave trade, not only across the Atlantic but all over the world. At huge cost to ourselves - thousands of sailors lost (reparation? Huh). Indeed, we only recently paid off the huge debt we incurred doing this.
Almost 1600 British and American sailors. Britain's campaign to end slavery in the Empire and the world is believed to be the most expensive moral crusade in history. It cost multiples of Britains nominal GDP when it was numero uno. Unimaginable sums. Trillions of dollars in today's money.
That alone points to the fraud of being insulted by non-white immigrants who wish to castigate us for slavery. Not a word about the abolishment and the clean up. An absolute disgrace. And not a single black nation was in favour.
Exodus 32:5-6 ins the ESV says, “ So when Aaron saw it, he built an altar before it. And Aaron made a proclamation and said, “Tomorrow is a feast to the LORD.” Then they rose early on the next day, offered burnt offerings, and brought peace offerings; and the people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play.”
The Hebrew verb for play here, “sahaq,” essentially means “sex-play.” One Hebrew dictionary uses the phrase “conjugal caresses,” as found in Genesis 26:8, 39:14 and 39:17. Essentially it refers to drunken immoral orgies and sexual play.
The Israelites had audible heard God speak the 10 Commandments only about 2 months before, but in the delay of waiting for Moses and in frustration for not knowing what happened to him, they turned to sin and idolatry.
This small detail of sexual immorality seem especially relevant given that you said it was the Mermaids organizations that commissioned the idol, I mean statue. This the same Mermaids organization who has leading members who promoting so-call minor attraction, yes?
Oh, it's gonna get ugly. "Without God, all is permissible."--Dostoevsky. Yes, indeed.
That skinny Harari sodomite was filmed correctly stating that the notion of human rights is a fiction. An atheist, he is absolutely correct in noting that--human rights does indeed stem from the Christianity he despises.
Lincoln saw the bloody Civil War as God's punishment for slavery. I imagine that the punishment for apostasy will be many times worse.
I have never read anything which hinted that Lincoln 'saw' such a thing. He was not interested in freeing the slaves until he realized the yankee abolitionists were not going to sign up all those northern militias otherwise, and the English were not going to provide Irish cannon fodder until he got onboard with the movement. Crushing the South for their property had nothing to do with slavery; yankee hypocrites still had their slaves right up to the emancipation proclamation. The Christian bible has absolutely nothing to say against slavery; Jesus tells the slaves to obey their masters.
Your nom de plume dishonors a man whose property was stolen by carpetbaggers and watched as negroes were armed and allowed to burn-loot-rape-and murder in those early days of the 'reconstruction'. The myth of confederates fighting for slavery is right up there with the myth of the holohoax. Gosh- who writes our history....
650K thousand dead whiteys so we can watch freed blacks burning looting murdering.
This is our payment for the sin of pride and believing the myth of equality.
After Lincoln's work was done for his financial masters his idea of greenbacks (freedom from the bankers) got him taken out the way muy pronto. JFK was not paying attention either.
I am not familiar with the "log cabin rail splitter" marvelous oratory, nor shall I become familiar with it; the few passages you highlight are sufficient to show his subservience to those who put him in office. The War of Northern Aggression has not yet spent itself against the hearts and minds of those in whom the flame of Western Christendom burns on. The worship of black negroes has now replaced the heart faith of Christianity; Jesus wept. The Christ-killers now have attached their faith to the name of Christianity. Jesus wept some more.
The negros from the dark heart of Africa have come to dwell in a land which White Europeans founded; now they rape and murder them, and thanks to the fantasies of utopian "enlightenment"- their White victims take a knee and sob with guilt. How should we appreciate the results of such for all the blood spilled?
As a servant of yankee industrialists and jewish financiers, 'honest Abe' served well; the Constitution became a dead letter after his actions in the war, and the Republic died to establish an empire of corporate rapine, debt slavery and taxation, and ultimately degenerating into a reasonable facsimile of Weimar Germany. At least they did not suffer the depredations of the negros.
"History is written by the victors", it is said. Ironically, the invention of the internet, a tool designed to insure the continuation of this evil empire, has gained the truth of our past, which is certainly not pretty. An obscure lawyer from the hinterlands of the "west" suddenly finds himself groomed and off to the highest office of the land. We recently had a magic negro in the same situation who didn't even have the decency to be born in this country. The iworship of the golden calf has never changed since Moses came off the mountain.
My Bible commentary noted that Moses likely made the Israelites drink the ground-up golden calf for several reasons:
(1) To show the so-called god was nothing and could be destroyed easily.
(2) To completely obliterate this idol.
(3) To make the people pay an immediate consequence of their sin.
(4) To make the gold of the idol absolutely unusable, being corrupted with bodily waste.
Cole, another Bible commenter, also mentions that “The gold dust sprinkled on the water of the wady, flowing down from the mountain, the water that Israel must drink, reminds us of the ‘water of bitterness’ to be drunk by the wife suspected of unfaithfulness (Numbers 5:18-22).” In essence, this punishment was a means of declaring the Israelites to be unfaithful to their God.
Yes. Your comment set me off because I’ve been learning recently that the Pentateuch is arranged symmetrically around Leviticus. The next section out from Leviticus is Israel at Sinai (Exodus 19-Numbers 10). The golden calf incident is about halfway through the Exodus section (Exodus 32), and the test for adultery is halfway through the Numbers section (Numbers 5). This explicitly confirms your reading of both passages as connected and I have never noticed this before!
Mermaids. As poisonous as Stonewall, and, as with Stonewall, our "conservative" government refuse to eject them from the public service arena. Their toxin is spread everywhere with NO consent from us fools, John & Jane taxpayer.
And folks, if you haven't read the Old Testament, do. Preferably the KJ version which is a work of literary delight as well as being the ... OT. In Exodus, God is present among his people (as a pillar of smoke in the day, and a pillar of fire by night). And vengeful when necessary. Observe, as you read through, that God disappears into the background... and ponder that.
From atheist parents (the mid war generation had many such) I was regardless schooled at Christian schools, and brought up to regard the Judaeo-Christian moral and ethical code as right and proper. Still do. I am a Christian, without a church (The C of E is fallen, though I am essentially Anglican). Knew most of the bible stories.
Reading the Bible (went on to the Gospels, and Acts, now on the Apocrypha) was eye opening. Reading learned commentaries at the same time (checkout Northrop Frye) was hugely illuminating, and made me realise that once my reading was complete, I would have no choice but to start again...
Very nice piece Briggs on a very filthy piece of contemporary paganism. I essentially agree with your connecting the drinking of the idol to communion. It is intended, I think, to force the people to internalize, literally, their sin. To stop blaming it on circumstances and recognize that it is forever a part of them. They must have noticed in the following years that no amount of ceremonial washing would ever remove the gold from where it had accumulated in their bodies and that what would be needed was One who washes with the Holy Spirit and with fire.
I get the parallels. I was brought up in a Christian ethos although I have always been an atheist. Being of the spectrum I always found the words in the various scriptures unfathomable I guess because it’s all emotion and no logic. With that said, I have no issue with religious folks provided it stays personal to the. At a group level religion is apt to spin out of control and become dangerous.
I'm not sure that Aaron made a new god for the Israelites. Instead, I believe he was allowing the Israelites to worship Yahweh in the form of a graven image. The first of The Ten Commandments is not to worship other gods. But the second commandment is to not make a graven image. Rather than breaking the first commandment, I think Aaron and the Israelites were primarily breaking the second commandment. This is why Aaron says, "These are your gods which brought you out of the land of Egypt." The royal use of the plural here can make the calf seem like a different god. But notice that Aaron made one golden calf. Aaron made a calf and then said to the Israelites, here is Yahweh who brought you out of Egypt. They didn't think they were worshipping a different god, they thought they were worshipping the one true God, but in a way that they could understand and made them comfortable. They wanted an image to bow down to, not the terrible force of lightning and terror on the mountain. They wanted to make the one true God into something small and visible. In a sense, they were worshipping a different god, of course. However, the fact that God cares enough about this distinction to make two separate commandments means that we should also be careful to specify which of the two commandments the Israelites were primarily breaking.
This is an important distinction for those who claim the name of Christ. It is not just the people worshipping different gods of different names who go wrong. Those who claim to worship the one true God through His Son Jesus must make sure they do not substitute a tamer or bite-size token version in His place--one who is smaller, easy to comprehend, earthly, maybe even cute.
On another note, Aaron's claim that he threw the gold in the fire and OUT POPPED THIS CALF might be one of the most hilarious lines in scripture. 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Public Law 102-14 102d Congress Joint Resolution Mar. 20, 1991 [H.J. Res. 104]
To designate March 26, 1991, as "Education Day, U.S.A.". Whereas Congress recognizes the historical tradition of ethical values and principles which are the basis of civilized society and upon which our great Nation was founded; Whereas these ethical values and principles have been the bedrock of society from the dawn of civilization, when they were known as the Seven Noahide Laws....
....Whereas Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, leader of the Lubavitch movement, is universally respected and revered and his eighty-ninth birthday falls on March 26,1991
Indeed, I visited what once was the splendid National Maritime Museum, in Greenwich - and by God, what a maritime history we have - some 20 years ago, by which time it had already morphed into the National Slavery Museum, with concomitant handwringing exhibits everywhere No mention of the fact that it was us Brits who put and end to the maritime slave trade, not only across the Atlantic but all over the world. At huge cost to ourselves - thousands of sailors lost (reparation? Huh). Indeed, we only recently paid off the huge debt we incurred doing this.
Almost 1600 British and American sailors. Britain's campaign to end slavery in the Empire and the world is believed to be the most expensive moral crusade in history. It cost multiples of Britains nominal GDP when it was numero uno. Unimaginable sums. Trillions of dollars in today's money.
That alone points to the fraud of being insulted by non-white immigrants who wish to castigate us for slavery. Not a word about the abolishment and the clean up. An absolute disgrace. And not a single black nation was in favour.
When I visited a decade ago, 1/3 of the tour at Monticello was dedicated to the lives of slaves on his property.
Huge mistake it was too.
We never should have interfered in African development and their affairs
Also telling in this parallel:
Exodus 32:5-6 ins the ESV says, “ So when Aaron saw it, he built an altar before it. And Aaron made a proclamation and said, “Tomorrow is a feast to the LORD.” Then they rose early on the next day, offered burnt offerings, and brought peace offerings; and the people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play.”
The Hebrew verb for play here, “sahaq,” essentially means “sex-play.” One Hebrew dictionary uses the phrase “conjugal caresses,” as found in Genesis 26:8, 39:14 and 39:17. Essentially it refers to drunken immoral orgies and sexual play.
The Israelites had audible heard God speak the 10 Commandments only about 2 months before, but in the delay of waiting for Moses and in frustration for not knowing what happened to him, they turned to sin and idolatry.
This small detail of sexual immorality seem especially relevant given that you said it was the Mermaids organizations that commissioned the idol, I mean statue. This the same Mermaids organization who has leading members who promoting so-call minor attraction, yes?
Oh, it's gonna get ugly. "Without God, all is permissible."--Dostoevsky. Yes, indeed.
That skinny Harari sodomite was filmed correctly stating that the notion of human rights is a fiction. An atheist, he is absolutely correct in noting that--human rights does indeed stem from the Christianity he despises.
Lincoln saw the bloody Civil War as God's punishment for slavery. I imagine that the punishment for apostasy will be many times worse.
Don’t imagine. Read Revelation for pre historical details. A hard read.
I have never read anything which hinted that Lincoln 'saw' such a thing. He was not interested in freeing the slaves until he realized the yankee abolitionists were not going to sign up all those northern militias otherwise, and the English were not going to provide Irish cannon fodder until he got onboard with the movement. Crushing the South for their property had nothing to do with slavery; yankee hypocrites still had their slaves right up to the emancipation proclamation. The Christian bible has absolutely nothing to say against slavery; Jesus tells the slaves to obey their masters.
Your nom de plume dishonors a man whose property was stolen by carpetbaggers and watched as negroes were armed and allowed to burn-loot-rape-and murder in those early days of the 'reconstruction'. The myth of confederates fighting for slavery is right up there with the myth of the holohoax. Gosh- who writes our history....
650K thousand dead whiteys so we can watch freed blacks burning looting murdering.
This is our payment for the sin of pride and believing the myth of equality.
After Lincoln's work was done for his financial masters his idea of greenbacks (freedom from the bankers) got him taken out the way muy pronto. JFK was not paying attention either.
"I have never read anything which hinted that Lincoln 'saw' such a thing."
Umm, I guess you're not familiar with Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, eh? Here you go (second-last-paragraph):https://www.owleyes.org/text/second-inaugural-address/read/text-of-lincolns-speech#root-10
I am not familiar with the "log cabin rail splitter" marvelous oratory, nor shall I become familiar with it; the few passages you highlight are sufficient to show his subservience to those who put him in office. The War of Northern Aggression has not yet spent itself against the hearts and minds of those in whom the flame of Western Christendom burns on. The worship of black negroes has now replaced the heart faith of Christianity; Jesus wept. The Christ-killers now have attached their faith to the name of Christianity. Jesus wept some more.
The negros from the dark heart of Africa have come to dwell in a land which White Europeans founded; now they rape and murder them, and thanks to the fantasies of utopian "enlightenment"- their White victims take a knee and sob with guilt. How should we appreciate the results of such for all the blood spilled?
As a servant of yankee industrialists and jewish financiers, 'honest Abe' served well; the Constitution became a dead letter after his actions in the war, and the Republic died to establish an empire of corporate rapine, debt slavery and taxation, and ultimately degenerating into a reasonable facsimile of Weimar Germany. At least they did not suffer the depredations of the negros.
"History is written by the victors", it is said. Ironically, the invention of the internet, a tool designed to insure the continuation of this evil empire, has gained the truth of our past, which is certainly not pretty. An obscure lawyer from the hinterlands of the "west" suddenly finds himself groomed and off to the highest office of the land. We recently had a magic negro in the same situation who didn't even have the decency to be born in this country. The iworship of the golden calf has never changed since Moses came off the mountain.
We are living the “punishment” right now -- the logical consequence of Godlessness and moral decay.
Another thing of interest to some.
My Bible commentary noted that Moses likely made the Israelites drink the ground-up golden calf for several reasons:
(1) To show the so-called god was nothing and could be destroyed easily.
(2) To completely obliterate this idol.
(3) To make the people pay an immediate consequence of their sin.
(4) To make the gold of the idol absolutely unusable, being corrupted with bodily waste.
Cole, another Bible commenter, also mentions that “The gold dust sprinkled on the water of the wady, flowing down from the mountain, the water that Israel must drink, reminds us of the ‘water of bitterness’ to be drunk by the wife suspected of unfaithfulness (Numbers 5:18-22).” In essence, this punishment was a means of declaring the Israelites to be unfaithful to their God.
Yes. Your comment set me off because I’ve been learning recently that the Pentateuch is arranged symmetrically around Leviticus. The next section out from Leviticus is Israel at Sinai (Exodus 19-Numbers 10). The golden calf incident is about halfway through the Exodus section (Exodus 32), and the test for adultery is halfway through the Numbers section (Numbers 5). This explicitly confirms your reading of both passages as connected and I have never noticed this before!
Yes, Bible commentaries are great for helping make these connections!
Mermaids. As poisonous as Stonewall, and, as with Stonewall, our "conservative" government refuse to eject them from the public service arena. Their toxin is spread everywhere with NO consent from us fools, John & Jane taxpayer.
And folks, if you haven't read the Old Testament, do. Preferably the KJ version which is a work of literary delight as well as being the ... OT. In Exodus, God is present among his people (as a pillar of smoke in the day, and a pillar of fire by night). And vengeful when necessary. Observe, as you read through, that God disappears into the background... and ponder that.
From atheist parents (the mid war generation had many such) I was regardless schooled at Christian schools, and brought up to regard the Judaeo-Christian moral and ethical code as right and proper. Still do. I am a Christian, without a church (The C of E is fallen, though I am essentially Anglican). Knew most of the bible stories.
Reading the Bible (went on to the Gospels, and Acts, now on the Apocrypha) was eye opening. Reading learned commentaries at the same time (checkout Northrop Frye) was hugely illuminating, and made me realise that once my reading was complete, I would have no choice but to start again...
Woke art is so bad, so ugly.
Looks like a black Medusa to me. Doesn’t look like a god that would care for protect anybody.
The pagan gods of history were all capricious and suffered from all the worst human passions. As I am sure this one does.
The godexx's name will be Gibsmedat
May we all get exactly what we deserve.
That's what we're afraid of!
Very nice piece Briggs on a very filthy piece of contemporary paganism. I essentially agree with your connecting the drinking of the idol to communion. It is intended, I think, to force the people to internalize, literally, their sin. To stop blaming it on circumstances and recognize that it is forever a part of them. They must have noticed in the following years that no amount of ceremonial washing would ever remove the gold from where it had accumulated in their bodies and that what would be needed was One who washes with the Holy Spirit and with fire.
I get the parallels. I was brought up in a Christian ethos although I have always been an atheist. Being of the spectrum I always found the words in the various scriptures unfathomable I guess because it’s all emotion and no logic. With that said, I have no issue with religious folks provided it stays personal to the. At a group level religion is apt to spin out of control and become dangerous.
Interesting to hear you say that you found it with no logic. I found the Bible very logical.
I'm not sure that Aaron made a new god for the Israelites. Instead, I believe he was allowing the Israelites to worship Yahweh in the form of a graven image. The first of The Ten Commandments is not to worship other gods. But the second commandment is to not make a graven image. Rather than breaking the first commandment, I think Aaron and the Israelites were primarily breaking the second commandment. This is why Aaron says, "These are your gods which brought you out of the land of Egypt." The royal use of the plural here can make the calf seem like a different god. But notice that Aaron made one golden calf. Aaron made a calf and then said to the Israelites, here is Yahweh who brought you out of Egypt. They didn't think they were worshipping a different god, they thought they were worshipping the one true God, but in a way that they could understand and made them comfortable. They wanted an image to bow down to, not the terrible force of lightning and terror on the mountain. They wanted to make the one true God into something small and visible. In a sense, they were worshipping a different god, of course. However, the fact that God cares enough about this distinction to make two separate commandments means that we should also be careful to specify which of the two commandments the Israelites were primarily breaking.
This is an important distinction for those who claim the name of Christ. It is not just the people worshipping different gods of different names who go wrong. Those who claim to worship the one true God through His Son Jesus must make sure they do not substitute a tamer or bite-size token version in His place--one who is smaller, easy to comprehend, earthly, maybe even cute.
On another note, Aaron's claim that he threw the gold in the fire and OUT POPPED THIS CALF might be one of the most hilarious lines in scripture. 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Familiar with “NOAHIDE LAW”?
This will make your head spin…
https://ronchapman.substack.com/p/the-case-against-noahide-law?
Public Law 102-14 102d Congress Joint Resolution Mar. 20, 1991 [H.J. Res. 104]
To designate March 26, 1991, as "Education Day, U.S.A.". Whereas Congress recognizes the historical tradition of ethical values and principles which are the basis of civilized society and upon which our great Nation was founded; Whereas these ethical values and principles have been the bedrock of society from the dawn of civilization, when they were known as the Seven Noahide Laws....
....Whereas Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, leader of the Lubavitch movement, is universally respected and revered and his eighty-ninth birthday falls on March 26,1991
cast it and them back into the sea
If the Christians in America had one grain of the Muslim’s sand, this would not have happened.
But it did.
Awesome post, professor. Thank you.