User Tools

Site Tools


lamb_of_god

Lamb of God

There is a teaching of Christianity which teaches that Jesus is the “Lamb of God”. This teaching aims to demonstrate two things; a) that Jesus was prophesied in the Old Testament and therefore is part of God's Plan, and b) to illustrate what that plan is/was.

Christian Claim

From Wikipedia (abridged):

Lamb of God (Latin: Agnus Deī) is a title for Jesus that appears in the Gospel of John. It appears at John 1:29, where John the Baptist sees Jesus and exclaims, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” It appears again in John 1:36.

Christian doctrine holds that a divine Jesus chose to suffer crucifixion at Calvary as a sign of his full obedience to the will of his divine Father, as an “agent and servant of God” in carrying away the sins of the world. In Christian theology the Lamb of God is viewed as both foundational and integral to the message of Christianity.

Scriptural Refutation

First we need to understand what exactly is the eisegesic reading Christians are applying to the text. It works out something like, “As God justified the Israelites in Egypt through their faith by putting the blood of a lamb on their doorposts, …” referring to the Exodus from Egypt. Thus the story of the exodus is subverted into a story where God asks the Israelites to trust him that some inexplicably random act would lead to their salvation from the Egyptians (representing the evil, secular society surrounding them; the sin in the world). The Exodus then takes on the larger than life meaning of a prophecy that Jesus would have to die for the sins of Israel (and the world, ie.. the 'chosen ones') and that anyone who had lambs blood on them would be saved from the coming destruction.

However, there is also the idea from Revelation that this lamb itself rises from the dead (which does not appear in Exodus) and then goes on, through his supernatural power (from the blood, which is again disconnected from the Exodus,) to achieve victory over his opponents. Thus a Messiah figure is painted – yet one strikingly at odds with Old Testament prophecies of the messiah which indicate that the messiah would need to be killed in battle (and would not be ressurected).

Thus the scriptural refutation appears to be an exposition on Exodus and relevant messianic prophecies. It is a mistake to engage the Christian over any passage they bring to show the Messiah is Jesus, because they have already failed to interpret that passage properly (or at all). Instead, new information has to be Brought to the table which shows directly that the Christian interpretation is wrong. This is in fact how the heresy was derived in the first place, and then accepted by people – out of a lack of knowledge of what the Bible really says. This is very similar to the lessons learned from Eve and Cain over mistaken or eisegesic interpretations of God's word.

Egyptian God refutation

1. Jesus cannot be the Lamb of God because the Lamb of God was an Egyptian God. Thus the worship or veneration of Jesus, as characterized by the worship of “The Lamb of God” is de facto the opposite of what the Exodus story teaches, and the worship of that which the Israelites were in fact sacrificing, in rebellion and defiance against Egypt.

After the fourth plague, Pharaoh offered Moses a compromise – the Israelites could worship God in Egypt without going to the wilderness. Moses replied, “We are going to sacrifice the gods of Egypt in honor of our God. Could we possibly slaughter the Egyptians’ gods right in front of their eyes, and they not stone us?” According to the Torah, the Egyptians held sheep to be sacred, as the image of their deity.

Ultimately, the Torah tells us, God commanded the Israelites to take a lamb or a kid for each household. They were to hold it for four days, from the tenth until the fourteenth of the first month, and slaughter it on the fourteenth. This was done in Egypt, despite the Egyptians’ religious beliefs. To this day Jews commemorate this event, calling the Sabbath preceding Passover Shabbat Hagadol – “The Great Sabbath” – for the Egyptians were powerless to do anything to harm them or to prevent them from sacrificing the Egyptian gods.

Egyptian mythology confirms this. The god Khnum was one of the principal gods of Egypt, and one of the oldest. Khnum’s temple was located on the island of Elephantine, today known as Aswan. He was said to be responsible for the level of the Nile and the silt that was deposited from the river’s flooding. He was also portrayed as the creator of mankind. His image is of that of a man with a ram’s head. Remains of mummified rams have been found in Khnum’s temple.https://torahtourguide.wordpress.com/2012/03/19/the-ancient-egyptians-worshiped-sheep-2/

As the one portrayed as the creator of mankind, the god Khnum occupied a unique position in the Egyptian pantheon for which he would have been singled out. Further;

Neither the Egyptian gods nor the Egyptian cult plays a very significant role in the book of Exodus. Only one passage briefly alludes to the worship of sacred animals, the most striking peculiarity of the Egyptian cult. Exod 8:22 (=26) mentions a ritual conflict between Hebrew and Egyptian beliefs, during which Moses objects to Pharaoh’s suggestion to hold the requested feast for the god of the Hebrews not in the wilderness, but in Egypt, with the argument that,

Exodus 8:22 “שמות ח:כב לֹ֤א נָכוֹן֙ לַעֲשׂ֣וֹת כֵּ֔ן כִּ֚י תּוֹעֲבַ֣ת מִצְרַ֔יִם נִזְבַּ֖ח לַי-הֹוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֵ֑ינוּ הֵ֣ן נִזְבַּ֞ח אֶת תּוֹעֲבַ֥ת מִצְרַ֛יִם לְעֵינֵיהֶ֖ם וְלֹ֥א יִסְקְלֻֽנוּ:“
“It would not be right to do so; for the sacrifices that we offer to the LORD our God are an abomination to the Egyptians. If we offer in the sight of the Egyptians sacrifices that are an abomination to them, will they not stone us?”

This passage suggests that Moses recognizes that the Israelites are going to sacrifice an animal that is sacred to the Egyptians, and that this would be an abomination for the Egyptians (תועבת מצרים). Ostensibly, this is because the ram was the sacred animal of two Egyptian gods, Amun and Khnum.

Contempt for Amun
Amun was a very important god in Ancient Egypt, and in the New Kingdom (1550-1070 B.C.E.) he was seen as the king of the gods, and was syncretized with the sun god as Amun-Ra. It would doubtless have been offensive to the priests of Amun to sacrifice a ram, and there certainly were temples of Amun in the Delta in the vicinity of Goshen and the capital, Pi-Ramesse. That such an act would be offensive would have been clear to any educated person who knew about Egypt in ancient times. Herodotus, in his survey of Egyptian customs, writes (Histories, 2:42):

Now all who have a temple set up to the Theban Zeus (=Amun) or who are of the district of Thebes, these, I say, all sacrifice goats and abstain from sheep… the Egyptians make the image of Zeus (=Amun) into the face of a ram… the Thebans then do not sacrifice rams but hold them sacred for this reason. Centuries later, the Roman historian, Publius Cornelius Tacitus (56-ca.117 C.E.), who believes that Moses created the Torah laws to polemicize against Egyptians, even suggests that the Jews, “sacrificed rams for the sake of despising Amun (caeso ariete velut in contumeliam Hammonis).” (Tacitus, History 5.1.4) https://www.thetorah.com/article/sacrificing-a-lamb-in-egypt

further;

The Khnum Temple in Elephantine

The temple of Khnum, Esna – wall carving shows Khnum and Menhit ‍Khnum is the god who creates individual humans on his potter’s wheel; his worship goes all the way back to the old kingdom (3rd millennium BCE). As the ram was also sacred to the priests of Khnum, they too would not have looked fondly on sacrificing a sheep. We do not know if there were temples of Khnum in the delta, but we do know of Khnum temples in the south, on the islands of Esna and Elephantine.

In fact, Moses’ fear of a violent reaction is highly reminiscent of a well-documented case that occurred at the beginning of the 5th century on the island of Elephantine.[3] There, a Judahite temple of Yahu stood in closest vicinity of the Egyptian temple of Khnum. The fact that the ram was the sacred animal of Khnum may have sanctified all related animals, such as sheep and lambs, on Elephantine.

The sacrifice of lambs on the occasion of Pesach must have offended the priests of Khnum, for they took advantage of the temporary absence of the Persian satrap and had Egyptian soldiers destroy the Jewish temple. The Jews asked the authorities in Jerusalem for the permission to rebuild the temple and got it, with the exclusion of making ‘olah offerings, i.e., sacrifices that were burnt in their entirety to God, without the worshipper eating any part, doubtlessly in order not to repeat the offence in the future.[4]

[3] Cf. for the following esp. Bezalel Porten, Archives from Elephantine. The Life of an Ancient Jewish Military Colony (Berkeley and Los Angeles: U of California P, 1968).

[4] TAD A4.9 und A4.10; HTAT Nr. 286 and 287 in: Porten, B. / Yardeni, A., Textbook of Aramaic Documents from Ancient Egypt 1-4 (TAD); Newly copied, edited and translated into Hebrew and English, (Jerusalem 1986-1999). It is not certain if this was the cause of the conflict on Elephantine; Porten advocates this interpretation, and it is most plausible.(ibid.)

And yet further(!):

Kimchi (1160-1235), Ibn Ezra (1089-c.1164) and Abarbanel (1437-1508) claim that the Egyptians were vegetarians and consequently could not partake in the meat dinner (Gen 43:17) that was prepared for the Hebrews. He says, כי העברים היו אכלים בשר כמו שאמר וטבח טבח. והמצרים לא היו אוכלים. ומה שהיו מגדלים הצאן, לחלב וגזה. ואמרו שהיו עובדים למזל טלה, לפיכך לא היו אוכלים שום בשר בהמה. (for the Hebrews were eating meat as he said ‘slaughter and prepare an animal.’ And the Egyptians did not eat. And the cattle that they raised were for milk and shearing. It was said that they worshiped the constellation Ram (Aries) that is why they did not eat the meat of a beast). Ibn Ezra even makes the Egyptian vegans as he believes the Hindu in India were (see Ibn Ezra on Gen 46:34). Being vegans the Egyptians despised anyone who ate meat (see Ibn Ezra (long version) on Ex 8:22). These commentators can- not be correct.http://www.scielo.org.za/pdf/ote/v22n1/08.pdf page 153

and ”…the ram and goose were considered sacred animals of Amun…” (ibid).

FIXME

under construction

FIXME

lamb_of_god.txt · Last modified: 2023/09/30 09:14 by 127.0.0.1

Donate Powered by PHP Valid HTML5 Valid CSS Driven by DokuWiki