History

[Abd_Yesua_alMasih]

I have just been listening to some documentaries this afternoon on the computer and I have a few questions which I thought one or two of you might know the answer to.

Firstly about Pompeii - someone in the last minutes of their life wrote 'Sodom and Gommorah' upon the wall. This would suggest to me there were either Christians or Jews in the city. Probably no point to this statement but I was wondering what people knew about any Christian community there if there was any.

My second question is concerning an Egyptian Pharoah who lived around 1500BC (I didnt catch his name and even if I did I would have no idea how to spell it) - he forsook the gods and declared there was one god - the Sun. Do you think this short stint of monotheism has any theological standing? Does anyone know of anyone who has written about monotheism in other cultures? I know one Rabbi had a theory that most cultures have monotheism within them somewhere and that this is a dieing clue to an ancient form of monotheism which everyone believed at the time of creation. I am not sure whether to believe this or not. Theories?

 

[SmokingFlax]

I can't answer about Pompeii but I'd be real curious about it as it is such an obvious act of God's judgment on a perverse culture. Didn't that event happen shortly after the sack of Jerusalem? I wonder if Eusebius might have mentioned it in his early Church history(?). Maybe Gibbons' [u:0e2444a7e0]Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire[/u:0e2444a7e0]???

Quote:

"I know one Rabbi had a theory that most cultures have monotheism within them somewhere and that this is a dieing clue to an ancient form of monotheism which everyone believed at the time of creation. I am not sure whether to believe this or not. Theories?"

You don't need a theory -read the first chapter of Romans.

 

[Abd_Yesua_alMasih]

[quote:a08b147f72="SmokingFlax"]Didn't that event happen shortly after the sack of Jerusalem?[/quote:a08b147f72]79AD - so you are right. I never thought of it like that. It happened during such a busy time of the year also - who knows how many thousands of people died.

 

[SmokingFlax]

Recently, I was in a used book store down here in Dallas that I like to frequent and I was browsing through the art books there. I came across a book that contained photos of the "artwork" that was found on the walls of Pompeii after it was recently excavated by archeologists. All of these paintings were, frankly, just simple p0rnography of the worst kind. I was ashamed to have even looked upon it and walked away feeling totally defiled. It only solidified my prior belief that Pompeii stands as a more recent display of what happened to the cities of the plain.

 

[Abd_Yesua_alMasih]

[quote:5dfc85247c="SmokingFlax"]Recently, I was in a used book store down here in Dallas that I like to frequent and I was browsing through the art books there. I came across a book that contained photos of the "artwork" that was found on the walls of Pompeii after it was recently excavated by archeologists. All of these paintings were, frankly, just simple p0rnography of the worst kind. I was ashamed to have even looked upon it and walked away feeling totally defiled. It only solidified my prior belief that Pompeii stands as a more recent display of what happened to the cities of the plain.[/quote:5dfc85247c]I studied the art of Pompeii in High School and did not see anything like that but I guess they cleaned it up a bit for us young ones

 

[Contra_Mundum]

It is consistent with the biblical history (which secularists always give short schrift to), which is the standard after all, that the Exodus and its catastrophic prelude (plagues) and aftermath (destruction for Pharaoh and his armies) resulted in a religious crisis for the Egyptians. Akhenaten did try apparently to institute some kind of monotheism (not the God of Israel, mind you) centered around sun-worship, sometime in this window of time (Egyptian academic chronology, while constantly being revised, remains wedded to evolutionary theory).

After Akhenaten's death, efforts were made not only to return Egypt to polytheism (which apparently were successful), but also to [i:d547cd1aaf]eliminate[/i:d547cd1aaf] Akhenaten from Egypt's memory. Egyptologists have found places where his name was erased, monuments of his destroyed or removed, etc.

All in all, this time of upheaval fits a model of crisis-mode operation and change (triple-whammy--crisis of faith, societal crack-up mostly because of the plagues, and political/financial collapse), that eventually settled back into old patterns, no doubt led by the many financially interested parties (regrouped, including and maybe especially the old religious orders) who were dis-favored under the new regime of Akhenaten.

Polytheism certainly must post-date monotheistic belief, because man didn't evolve--biologically or culturally. He was created the way God said he was in the Bible. Polytheism is a [i:d547cd1aaf]devolved[/i:d547cd1aaf] thought-form. But Akhenaten's imposition was not a "resurrection" of an earlier faith. There is no real evidence for it, and if it was it would be a most unique event in history. He could never have survived almost certain overthrow/assasination if he had tried his overnight, wholesale disruption in a time of relative calm. His experiment was an idolatrous attempt to salvage state-run religion in an age of chaos and crisis, brought on by the smashing of Egypt's faith(s) by the One True God of Israel.

 

[SmokingFlax]

Quote:

"I studied the art of Pompeii in High School and did not see anything like that but I guess they cleaned it up a bit for us young ones."

Believe me, what I saw was rotten...homos, children, you name it -all graphically depicted.