The Catholic Encyclopedia aknowledges the Egyptian origin of the word and it's numerologic significance. I will post it later.
peacefulpete
JoinedPosts by peacefulpete
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10
Amen and Amen
by peacefulpete inever wonder where that funny little word came from?
amen (aka amen ra) was the king of the gods in egyptian mythology.
in the name of amen egyptians invoked blessings for centuries.
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10
Amen and Amen
by peacefulpete inever wonder where that funny little word came from?
amen (aka amen ra) was the king of the gods in egyptian mythology.
in the name of amen egyptians invoked blessings for centuries.
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peacefulpete
Yerrusalem...better do your research. Amen (pronounced A-mane in Egyptian and Hebrew) stood alone as the name of the god during the early montheistic experiment period in Egypt (14th century BC) and was used alone even centuries after that as the abreviated form of the local expression of Amen. (just like Baal). The attatchments to the name were added when the populace rebelled and returned to polytheism. Think about it, would you, being montheistic, today end your prayers with a newly coined word that looks identical and rhymes with Buddha? The fact that this name was commonly known throughout the the middle east (Egypt ruled Palestine during the supposed period of conquest by Joshuah) as the God of the Egyptians makes the word choice even more likely the result of deliberate association with the God. But I knew someone would be peed off by this suggestion but the evidence is on my side. Is this relevent? Maybe not, but interesting.
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10
Amen and Amen
by peacefulpete inever wonder where that funny little word came from?
amen (aka amen ra) was the king of the gods in egyptian mythology.
in the name of amen egyptians invoked blessings for centuries.
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peacefulpete
Oh like everything there are disputers. The usual defence is that the word Amen is a shortened form of amein which means"firm" in Hebrew. This word does appear in other nonprayer contexts in the Bible where it is translated "faithful". This is so because the next step is to say the word "firm" metaphorically means "faithful" then they say that since a Jew or christan is asking the "faithful" hearer of prayers the thing prayed for is certain to happen. Then it is a simple matter of being in agreement with the thing prayed for. And voila! Amen means"so be it". Lexicons are of no help as they deal with the usage in Rabbinic and late Bibical Hebrew rather than it's derivation from antiqity. The simpler and jucier explanation is that the word is simply a loan word from Egypt where it was the top god's name. The word likely then secondarily took on the meaning "firm or faithful" as often happened to gods names. There was a neat site that expounded on this but it seems to be down. There are a bunch of kooky ones that touch on it, some even suggesting that the word Amen not be used lest we anger Jesus. Hey I posted this just to tee off Hooberus and Thi Chi anyway.
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10
Amen and Amen
by peacefulpete inever wonder where that funny little word came from?
amen (aka amen ra) was the king of the gods in egyptian mythology.
in the name of amen egyptians invoked blessings for centuries.
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peacefulpete
An added thought ,often the epithets and charactor of Amen are compared with Yahweh's. It is suggested that Yahweh (a minor diety under EL) was remodeled in part after Amen by the tribes we call Isreal. This would explain their use of his name.
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10
Amen and Amen
by peacefulpete inever wonder where that funny little word came from?
amen (aka amen ra) was the king of the gods in egyptian mythology.
in the name of amen egyptians invoked blessings for centuries.
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peacefulpete
Ever wonder where that funny little word came from? Amen (aka Amen Ra) was the King of the Gods in Egyptian mythology. In the name of Amen Egyptians invoked blessings for centuries. The Jews in ancient times, acknowleging many gods, added the name to their prayers to El or Yahweh as a little added insurance. The tradition stuck. Christians unquestioningly followed suit. Because of the Christian ignorance of the origins even many dictionaries define Amen as simply an expression meaning "so be it" dispite no etymolgy to support it. Just a little trivia.
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Jews practiced human sacrifice
by peacefulpete inlev.27:28,29 says ..."but any devoted thing which a man devotes to jehovah from all which belongs to him, of man or of animal, or of the field of his possession, it shall not be sold nor redeemed.
everyone devoted to destruction(sacrificed) is most holy no devoted thing which is dedicated by man shall be ransomed; it shall surely be put to death.
this explains why jeptha, when promising to offer as burnt offering the first person to great him upon his successful return from war, had to kill his daughter dispite his feelings for her.
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peacefulpete
Bebu and thi chi.. both of you seem to have missed the very point of this thread. The religion of the people we call Jews was like all religions, evolving. The OT went thru at least 5 periods of redaction to conflate contradicting stories and update the theology. It is only due to the popularity of certain tales that much more was not edited out. Sometimes the way the editor chose to deal with a now embarassing passage was not thorough enough and clues to the original meaning an be detected. As to suggesting that Jeptha was guilty of some personal screw up (oops I vowed to burn my daughter so I guess I had better do it) is ridiculous. The Bible says Yahweh continued to bless him as Judge of Isreal and helped him kill 42,000 Ephraimites because they refused to support him. Heb 11:32 lists him as a model man of faith. If he did something so horrible as burning his daughter to Yahweh don't you think he would have been at least demoted in the story if in fact Yahweh was not pleased? The later overlay upon the OT has Yahweh condemning human sacrifice in a number of places, but this was not always the case. The other examples listed here also create a picture very consistant with the primative cults in the land at the time.
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That's why they were sad-u-see
by peacefulpete ineveryone knows that the saducees differed from the pharisees over the teaching of an afterlife(resurrection).
they also didnot accept the idea of angels, demons, and miraculous healings among other things.
the question is why?
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peacefulpete
Neon..I have no doubt that their are a hundred theories about isaiah. My comment demonsrates that scholarship does conceed to multiple authors. As you yourself said nearly everyone recognises at least 2. The post was made to you because you suggested that Isaiah and Job refuted the postexilic developement of the resurrection doctrine, and the evidence does not support you. The Job comment was dealt with in my earlier post, as I said the author may have felt his God was capable of doing as other gods claimed to be able to do, yet this does not amount to a doctrine of a mass resurrection in a Messianic era. As I said it is funny how some (christians) insist they know what the jews believed better than the Jews. Science is not conspiring agaisnt Christianity, don't go there.
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Jews practiced human sacrifice
by peacefulpete inlev.27:28,29 says ..."but any devoted thing which a man devotes to jehovah from all which belongs to him, of man or of animal, or of the field of his possession, it shall not be sold nor redeemed.
everyone devoted to destruction(sacrificed) is most holy no devoted thing which is dedicated by man shall be ransomed; it shall surely be put to death.
this explains why jeptha, when promising to offer as burnt offering the first person to great him upon his successful return from war, had to kill his daughter dispite his feelings for her.
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peacefulpete
another...ex 13:1,2 The first born of animal and human was to belong to Yahweh and be offered up. Later editor added the part about buying back the right to live to soften the idea of God wanting human sacrifice..
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That's why they were sad-u-see
by peacefulpete ineveryone knows that the saducees differed from the pharisees over the teaching of an afterlife(resurrection).
they also didnot accept the idea of angels, demons, and miraculous healings among other things.
the question is why?
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peacefulpete
Those Job passages do not refer to a resurrection teaching, we have simply superimposed the modern ideas upon the words. The Jews and Christian scholars all recognise that the idea was first definatively expressed in Daniel. (2nd century BC) Isaiah was the work of at least 4 authors or schools. The New American and Jerusalem Bibles as well as most others recognise these 4 hands. The first 12 chapters are considered original Isaiah albeit with interpolations. The date for these sections is of course controvertial. Those determined that they contain actual "prophecy" date them as close to but before the events described as possible to sneak them under the wire. Those without these beliefs have asigned them dates after the events. (body of chapts. 1-12, around 700 bc; chapters 13,14,24-27,34-35,40-55, 537-8 bc; chapts 15-23,28-33,36-39 late 6th century bc; chapts 56-66 end of 5th century) The Is. 26: 19 passage has been recognized as a late (2nd century) interpolation.
I will also mention that a while back I posted examples of very early texts that spoke of Baal and his consort as having the ability to restore to life so the issue is not whether the Jews believed such a thing was possible but rather whether they had doctrinalised it. These type of eschatological ideas did not develope until post Babylon.
I edited to correct myself.
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That's why they were sad-u-see
by peacefulpete ineveryone knows that the saducees differed from the pharisees over the teaching of an afterlife(resurrection).
they also didnot accept the idea of angels, demons, and miraculous healings among other things.
the question is why?
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peacefulpete
funny how we think we know what the Jews believed better than the jews