Egyptians rubbing poo-poo in their boo-boos

by drew sagan 29 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  snowbird

  LOL.

  It was mixed with honey and aromatic gums.

  Sylvia
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  purplesofa

  Pretty clear where the poop goes,

  I think the same God would have made it clear too,

  No Blood Transfusions.
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  drew sagan

  Thanks for the reference Leolaia. I swear this was in a more modern JW book, but I could be wrong.

  A more substantive question, is anything really gained by comparing the mosaic law to the Papyrus Ebers? I suppose if you date the early books of the BIble as early as the WTS does then this is more relevant.
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  Billy the Ex-Bethelite

  Drew, Here's from the "Bible Encyclopedia" Insight:

  *** it-1 p. 693 Egypt, Egyptian ***
  Ancient Egyptian knowledge of medicine has often been presented as quite scientific and advanced. While some knowledge of anatomy is evident and certain simple surgical methods were developed and cataloged, much ignorance is also revealed. Thus, while an Egyptian papyrus text speaks of the heart as being connected by vessels to every part of the body, the same text presents the vessels as carrying, not blood, but air, water, semen, and mucus. Not only was there a fundamental misunderstanding of the functions of the living body, but the medical texts are heavily dosed with magic and superstition; magical spells and incantations make up a major portion of the information. Remedies not only included beneficial herbs and plants but also prescribed such ingredients as the blood of mice, urine, or the excrement of flies, which, together with the spells, were “calculated to drive the possessing demon out of the man’s body in sheer disgust.” (History of Mankind, by J. Hawkes and Sir Leonard Woolley, 1963, Vol. I, p. 695) Such lack of understanding may have contributed to some of the ‘fearsome diseases of Egypt,’ likely including elephantiasis, dysentery, smallpox, bubonic plague, ophthalmia, and other ailments; Israel could gain protection from them by faithful obedience. (De 7:15; compare De 28:27, 58-60; Am 4:10.) The hygienic measures imposed on the Israelites following the Exodus are in dramatic contrast to many of the practices described in the Egyptian texts.—Le 11:32-40

  HOWEVER

  Leo,

  I'm way to lazy to look this up, particularly if you might know off the top of that big, juicy brain of yours... But... I would swear on Ted Jaracz's life that somewhere (outside of JW-land) I read an article explaining the discovery of some Egyptian records that refered to the "Egyptian Doctor's Secret Code". As many other professional tradesmen tried to guard their secrets, so too, these ancient doctors had a code for the ingredients of their remedies. It mentioned that the high success rate for recovery from some of the maladies indicated that donkey dung didn't really mean ass poop. Taking the recipes literally would have been difficult and often fatal, but if it was a code for other herbs, minerals, bread mold, honey, oil, whatever, it would help the patient recover and the doctor's career and "mystical powers" would earn gold and prestige. As I recall, they hadn't figured out this "code" but suspected that there was something in the hieroglyphs themselves, rhyming phonetics, or just memorization that made these scripts so valuable to the doctor. They hoped to find a "Rosetta Stone" that would help them decode the doctors secrets, but they seemed confident that ancient Egyptian doctors were brilliant.

  It's a shame that Chuck Russell was a pyramidologist and not an Egyptologist!
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  Leolaia

  A more substantive question, is anything really gained by comparing the mosaic law to the Papyrus Ebers?

  That is exactly the kind of question that should be asked. The Papyrus Ebers is a medical treatise, which specifically delineates the different ingredients used in remedies, whereas the Mosaic Law (composite as it is) is a legal treatise that has very little to say about disease (other than labelling patients as "unclean"). What do we know about Israelite medical practices? Next to nothing! The Society is presuming that the law on excrement disposal precludes any secondary use of dung (such as in medicine), but this is a non sequitur. Our own laws provide for excrement disposal and treatment, and one could easily point to our complex sewage treatment system as similarly regarding excrement as "unclean" and removed "out of sight", but that has no bearing on our own use of dung as fertilizer. One could look elsewhere in the OT and see that Yahweh directed the prophet Ezekiel to use human dung as fuel in making bread (Ezekiel 4:12); how can that be if the "Mosaic Law" did not provide for this? The making of medical compounds is a very specialized activity that is not representative of common uses of obscure ingredients. In the case of the Papyrus Ebers, many of the remedies call for crocodile excrement — not exactly the kind of thing that happens to be lying around population centres needing to be disposed of. More to the point, the ancient Egyptians did have a sanitation system of sorts; they used walking portable waste management units otherwise known as swine. The "Mosaic Law" specifically discourages the use of such a system because the most effective way to control the pig population was through pork consumption and/or animal sacrifice, and without this, it was less practical to use swine on a large scale for purposes of sanitation.

  But... I would swear on Ted Jaracz's life that somewhere (outside of JW-land) I read an article explaining the discovery of some Egyptian records that refered to the "Egyptian Doctor's Secret Code". As many other professional tradesmen tried to guard their secrets, so too, these ancient doctors had a code for the ingredients of their remedies.

  I haven't seen any evidence of this and instead the recent monograph Ancient Egyptian Medicine (by John F. Nunn, 2002) takes the ingredients at face value, see p. 138. Also it is worth noting that doctors generally specialized in a single disease, and the compilation in the Papyrus Ebers likely reflects input from a very wide range of sub-specializations throughout Egypt. I find it a little difficult to believe that a standardized system of "coded reference" would have resulted from such a situation.
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  dissed

  What the Isrealites did was just commoen sense. Something all armies do.

  "Gee Sarge, where should I take a crap?"

  "Soldier. Take your shovel, go outside camp, out of site, and don't forget to bury it, because you ain't ruining my supper with that smell."
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  Billy the Ex-Bethelite

  Leo, Thanks for more of the excrement info. But Dang, I wish I would have hung onto a copy of the info I'd seen. Oh well. Except for the poo ingredients, the Egyptians in their day did have a respectible understanding of anatomy and medicine in many respects, eh?

  Have any great ancient Jewish medical journals ever been uncovered? You know, where "leprosy" infected buildings and clothing, and epilepsy was caused by demon posession? I think god's medical treatment for many ills was to throw the patient out of the camp until they got better or died... with the hope of a future resurrection.
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  Billy the Ex-Bethelite

  Drew, here's another quote:

  *** w82 12/15 p. 5 The Bible—Is It Really From God? ***
  Here is another example. At the time of Moses it was the custom in Egypt to use human or animal excrement as a remedy for certain ailments. Furthermore, Moses was raised in Egypt and was “instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians.” (Acts 7:22) But the comments he wrote at Deuteronomy 23:12, 13 are completely free from the mistaken—in fact, harmful—medical practices of Egypt. According to these words, in ancient Israel human excrement was to be considered unclean, to be buried away from populated areas and water supplies. As you know, modern medical science agrees.
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  AllTimeJeff

  Speaking of being full of shit.... lol

  Ok, JW's are sooooo smart because they claim the Jews who buried their poo as their own. Now you HAVE to believe in 1914 and the GB. That's just how it works in dub land.....
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  Billy the Ex-Bethelite

  And Jeff, considering the size of the exodus camp, how long would it take a Hebrew and his peg to get from his tent near the center of the camp to go all the way outside the camp in order to dig is hole and do his chores?