Arquivo para a ‘Noosfera’ Categoria
The Kingdoms of Israel and Judah and History
26
Jul
As we have pointed out, it is a period of
historical disintegration, and the need to group the Hebrews and also bring the divine message is explained by some scholars as the creation of this historical figure Joshua, who would be a name modified by Moses to Hosea (in Hebrew Yehoshua), as narrated, among others, by the biblical historian Robert Coote (2010).
Joshua was the son of Nun, from the tribe of Ephraim, his book is the first roll of the “Books of the Prophets” according to the Judeo-Christian tradition, and he will be the leader of the battle of the fortress city of Jericho, which became eternalized as the famous “Siege of Jericho”.
However, the arrival in Canaan, after sending “spies” to recognize the land of Canaan, the promised land will be governed by judges in an attempt to maintain the religious and political order of the people that was in the process of fragmentation, among the main judges were Jephthah, Gideon, Samson and Samuel.
When Samuel got old, the sons “became greedy, accepted bribes and perverted justice”(Samuel, 8:3), something similar to the present day, the authorities went to Samuel and asked for kings like other peoples.
Samuel in a meeting with Saul who went out to look for his donkeys of the father Kish, who was a man of possessions from the tribe of Benjamin, there Samuel has a divine vision that that was the man chosen by God.
Saul should receive the prophet’s orders, but he reveals himself as having an immature and pagan faith, he wanted to offer sacrifices to God to obtain quick help for his interests, something similar to many Christians today, and despite many victories over the enemies of Israel, is deposed, and in his place is appointed David, who had fought the Philistine giant Goliath.
The division of the kingdom of Israel in the period that David ruled for a long time was only in the biblical narrative, but in 2015 the name Is-bosheth (or Is-baal) was discovered in an inscription by Israeli archaeologists (JNS.org, 2015).
For many centuries, the name Is-baal was found exclusively in the Bible. In 2015, however, Israeli archaeologists revealed to have discovered an inscription with this name on an ancient artifact for the first time “Eshbaal Ben Beda”.
Out of envy of David, Saul will try to kill him twice and David, when he has the opportunity, does not do it and forgives him, and Saul ends up committing suicide.
From David’s relationship with Bathsheba, wife of Uris that David sends to the front of the battle to die, Solomon will be born, who will govern his unified people with wisdom, but later approximately in the year 931 BC. a new Hebrew schism will occur.
This period of history closely approximates the period of the rise of the Assyrian Empire in 912 BC, in 612 BC. begins the decline of this empire and rise of the Persian Empire (550 BC).
JNS.org. Jewish and Israel news (june 16 of 2015). «King David-era inscription pieced together from broken jug»,
Exodus: historical and divine realities
25
Jul
The history of Ancient Egypt is generally
divided into the Old Kingdom, from the great pyramids of the pharaohs Cheops, Chephren and Mycerinus, built near Memphis, the capital of Egypt at the time, then the Middle Kingdom (2100 BC to 1580 BC), the biblical character is born at the end of this period, and the New Kingdom (1580 BC to 715 BC), when they begin to face invasions until they are defeated by the Assyrians (6 70 BC).
In the biblical narrative one can divide the: first (1,1-15,21): coexistence in Egypt from Joseph to Moses; second (15.22-18.27): theophany and journey in the desert to Sinai; third (19-40): option for the divine proposal (Moses is called to lead the Exodus) and the covenant on Sinai.
It is interesting to observe the sequence that is repeated in the period of Abraham: leaving Ur in Mesopotamia, walking to Canaan, the alliance with Abraham (Gen 17:15-17) and the call to God in the offering of his son Isaac and the formation of the 12 tribes of Israel and the sale of Joseph to the Egyptians.
It is important to analyze the 10 plagues in Egypt in this biblical-historical context, a famous papyrus found in 1909 of an Egyptian called Ipuwer (or Ipuur which according to the scholar A. H. Gardiner was a typical name of the period 1850 BC -1450 BC), written in the form of a poem complains that women now have “furniture”, and girls have “mirrors” while the rich man lives in rags.
The papyrus is important for its connection with the biblical narrative, mentioning slaves fleeing Egypt and rivers of blood, but scholars speak of the Minoan eruption, which occurred during this period on the island of Santorini, near the island of Crete, which devastated a Minoan settlement.
The waves produced may have reached Egypt at the time, but the effect on the Nile delta is questioned by most fishermen, but the Ipuwer papyrus has a narrative close to the biblical one regarding the events in Egypt and, most importantly, narrates the beginning of the fall of the Empire through customs, a period that history calls the New Empire.
The 10 plagues of Egypt in the biblical narrative were: the river of blood, infestation of frogs, lice and flies, plague in cattle, ulcers in people, hailstones, infestation of locusts, darkness and the death of the firstborn of families.
As described in previous posts, the people of Israel guided by Moses will cross the desert, reach Canaan after four wars and stay there until a new exile in Babylon.
Egypt after the invasion of the Assyrians mentioned above, later they were dominated by the Persians in 525 BC. and by Alexander the Great in 322 BC, finally by the Romans in 30 BC.
Whether for purely historical reasons, social decay or divine intervention, empires fall from the oppression and tyranny they exercise, but there is a cycle of suffering.
The right question about evil
21
Jul
There is no doubt that there is cruelty, evil
and indifference which is the great contemporary evil, but it is neither Manichaeism nor pure evil incarnate.
Always at all times agreements and wars were tried, often just for convenience or even war tactics, we have already posted about bad post-war agreements, such as Germany that came out humiliated from the first world war and we learned little from history.
We are making the route of the Jewish-Sumerian people until they get back to Canaan, where they left due to hunger to go to Egypt, before leaving Moses receives the divine message to address the Pharaoh, he goes with his brother Aaron, but what is the point knowing that the Pharaoh is merciless with the Israelite people? It’s just that the true divine message is always good seed for all peoples, that’s why the parable of the good seed, which should be the name of the parable of the tares and wheat.
Even going to talk to the pharaoh, the Israelites will be pursued, and then they will have to fight 4 battles in the flight through the desert, the battle of Rephidim where the marauding Amalekites win, the second again against Amalekites and Canaanites (so the location of Rephidim may be further north), the third a defeat against Canaanites and the 4th. the final victory.
See the reading (Mt 13,26,27): “When the wheat grew and the ears began to form, the weeds also appeared. The employees went looking for the owner and said to him, ‘ Lord, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? So where did the weeds come from?’ and the manager says not to uproot the weeds because it might uproot the wheat with it.
The divine seed is always good, but tares will always grow among the wheat and only from there can we correctly interpret the seed that falls on bad soil and among thorns and does not flower or bear fruit.
There is always hope and always a possibility for peace and harmony among nations and peoples.
The people get tired and don’t believe anymore
20
Jul
The return to the land of the tribes of Israel
will not be easy, but it is to escape the oppression of Egypt, a nation that will face the famous “plagues of Egypt”, which are biblical, but also historical: the plague, war and decay and the famine, common episodes in the declines of empires.
The passage from the Exodus narrative reads (Ex 3:17): “And I decided to bring you out of the oppression of Egypt and to lead you into the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, to one land flowing with milk and honey”, we see on the map what Canaan was like at the time.
The long journey and the scarcity of food, they ate a fallen food that they called manna and there was also a lack of water, in a place called Massa and Meriba, where the people begin to argue and “try the Lord” questioning: Is the Lord in the among us or not?
That’s when Moses will go looking for water in a prophetic inspiration.
There Moses manages to “smite the rock”, somehow shatters a rock on the mountain and finds water, but then comes the battle with the marauding Amalekites (Exodus 17:1-16), although literature indicates Horeb’s proximity to the south, the site was probably farther north, because the site of the Rephidim Battle (meaning resting place) must be farther north, at the head of the Red Sea, near Mount Sinai (Exodus 15:17-22).
During battle Moses must keep his staff raised. However, with his advanced age, his arm starts to bend, and it is necessary to support his arm so that the Israelites win the battle.
So many times these wars happened, history says that the first of them was the battle between Sumerians and Umma (around 2700 BC), the wars of Egypt, then came the Persians and the famous Punic (Greek) wars, the Roman empire , medieval battles, the Hundred Years’ War and the two world wars, the minor wars of empires and colonies.
If we learned not only from written histories, but also from worldviews (those that established the cycles: plague, war and famine) and really believed in a possibility of universal peace, not the pax Romana which is submission to an empire, respecting cultures and peoples of different races and creeds, a true civilizing process could be built.
The idea that those who want peace prepare for war is not humanitarian and still haunts the minds of men and leaders with a thirst for power
The Burning Bush Episode
19
Jul
The story of the departure of the Israeli people
from Egypt begins with an extraordinary event in which Moses leads Jethro’s flock, I am father-in-law and priest of Midian (history records him as a Druze) and near Mount Horeb he sees a burning bush that does not consumes it (Ex 3,3): “I am going to approach this extraordinary sight, to see why the bush does not consume”.
There he receives the mission to remove his people from Egypt and the episode of the Escape from Egypt will begin, just as Abraham had withdrawn from an unlikely path from Ur of the Chaldeans, Moses will also make a route going through the region of Midian, in the biblical narrative this people it is also of Abrahamic origin since Abraham after Sarah’s death had Midian or Madian with his wife Keturah.
The historical record of the plagues of Egypt that preceded the flight can be found in the “Ipuwer papyrus” discovered in Egypt at the beginning of the last century, and taken to the Leiden museum in Holland, it was deciphered by A. H. Gardiner, and was found near the city of Avaris.
The Israelites at the beginning of the persecution are established in the warehouses of Rameses and Pitom, then they begin to migrate to Sucode, and from there they begin the flight to the Sinai desert, it will be in Horeb where Moses saw the burning bush that will receive the tablet of the law, the Ten commandments.
Jetro’s connection with the Midianites, he was a priest, is fundamental in the logistical support for the fleeing caravan, and this is probably the reason that they took a longer route, and we see from the map that it is likely that at the end of the persecution there will be a new one. miraculous episode that is the passage to be dried by the Sea.
The following story of the people will speak of many connections with the Moabites (Ruth was a Moabite and Lot would have given rise to the people through incest with his daughter) they lived in the desert so the road to Canaan will be even longer, the Egyptians still dominated the region, what was to be accomplished in days says the narrative that took 40 years.
In the history of that region, troglodytes lived, not in the folkloric sense that we know, but the fact that they lived in caves and houses dug in the mountains, as was also characteristic of the north in the well-known Cappadocia, region of so many mystics of antiquity.
Persecution and emigration always affected nations in wars.
Joseph of Egypt and Moises: the Noosphere
18
Jul
Joseph of Egypt before the Exodus of the
Israelites in Egypt, had two dreams the first that the brothers identified as “beams” who bowed to him, and the second that the Moon and eleven stelae (symbolizing the 11 tribes) bowed to him, and the brothers and even Israel do not believe in this, this cosmogony is present in the three great Abrahamic monotheistic religions.
It will be Joseph in Egypt who will feed them in the time of the lean cows (the Pharaoh’s dream that Joseph unravels), there are no precise reports, however, the most likely is that this has taken place in the time of Pharaoh Sheshi I, and history records a period of famine and scarcity in the region.
But with the death of Joseph, the biblical narrative, now of the exodus says that the successor Pharaoh did not know Joseph and begins to fear, ordering that heavy work be established for the Hebrews until he orders to throw all the newborns in the Nile river, and then begins the saga of Moses.
Moses was born of the tribe of the Levites, who were priests and had no territory in Israel, he was the grandchild of Coate, son of Amram, with Jochebed his aunt and sister of Coate, due to the death of the newborns, he is raised in secret and after 3 months, when it is no longer possible to hide it, it is thrown into a basket prepared with tar and bitumen and thrown into the Nile, her older sister is on the lookout and sees that princess Henutmire, together with Yunet, when they hear a child crying the rescue, they know it’s a Hebrew child, but they decide to raise him.
It will be through Moses now, that the Hebrew people will return to Israel, in the biblical narrative it is when Moses was near Mount Horeb that he sees a burning bush (but it does not burn) and dresses in a veil because he cannot look in the face for her, who receives the mission to lead her people to Israel.
This period is called the Middle Kingdom, from 2100 BC. until 1580 BC, when Palestine and Nubia were conquered and where they found precious metals that stabilized the economy.
The Egyptians were polytheistic, and Moses marries Zipora (Exodus 2:21) who was a daughter of Jethro, a Druze priest, who claimed to believe in a single god, but for the Druze it is a type of universal mind, something close to the noosphere de Chardin, but reduced to “mind”.
This is followed in the biblical narrative by the plagues of Egypt and after many years, the Hebrews walk dry through the Red Sea.
The fear of change and not evolving
14
Jul
The great lesson of Joseph of Egypt is that 
under an apparent “slavery” or difficulty is hidden a necessary change for peoples and nations to develop, in history the departure of the Hebrew people from the “promised land” is even desired by God according to the biblical text in Genesis (Gn 46,4): “I will go down with you to Egypt and I will bring you back from there when you return; and it is Joseph who will close your eyes”, he says to Jacob (Israel) and asks him to take all his relatives.
The Egyptian Civilization was formed from the mixture of different peoples, among them, the Hamites, the Semites and the Nubians, who emerged in the Paleolithic Period, and it is probable from recent archaeological research that the Jews went to make their settlements in the Hyksos region who were defeated by the Egyptians.
In the year 3200 B.C. Menes unified the kingdoms of lower and upper Egypt forming the Egyptian Empire and Menes being its first emperor and pharaoh, the Jews went there later in the year 1750 BC. and stayed until 1250 BC. as slaves because they were feared by the pharaohs.
Most likely it was during the reign of Pharaoh Ramses was the son of Pharaoh Sehti I and Queen Tuya. He was the third pharaoh of the Nineteenth Dynasty of Egypt. At the age of 10, Ramses was sure that he would assume the throne when he was recognized as the “eldest son of the king”, having fought at a young age alongside his father in the conquest of Lebanon (see the map between the blue and red lines).
The last pharaoh was Xerxes I, famous for the battle of Thermopylae, where the Greek general Leonidas would have fought with only 7000 men, and prepared an ambush in a pass between Thermopylae mountains, but the Greeks were betrayed and the strategy was discovered.
Also from this period, the repentance of the brothers of Jacob (Israel) who struggles “with God”, and of the brothers, especially Judah, who regrets having sold his brother Joseph as a slave, shows how in the story of an evil one can take a good if errors are recognized.
Even the bad seed can flourish even if it is planted in bad but fertilized soil.
The sale of Joseph, son of Jacob
13
Jul
The story of Esau and Jacob continues in the
next generation, among the children of Jacob, now Ishmael after he fought with the angel, Joseph was the most loved, which generated envy in the brothers who planned to kill him but later decided to sell him to an Egyptian caravan to a caravan leader named Potiphar, but Joseph in Egypt becomes a prisoner because Potiphar’s wife was fond of him and trapped him for refusing to betray her teachings.
In prison he manages to unravel the dreams of a prisoner who was chief cupbearer and says he will be released and becomes cupbearer in the Pharaoh’s palace who also has strange dreams, and then the cupbearer remembers Joseph and he unravels the dream of the Pharaoh that was to store food (in the photo as was the map of this period).
Joseph’s brothers go to Egypt due to the shortage of food and they encounter Joseph, who recognizes them and sends them to prison, but ends up forgiving them and provides the wheat they need and says that everything happened so that he could help them
In a work of 4 volumes, the famous writer Thomas Mann (author of The Magic Mountain) wrote the story of Joseph, son of Jacob who is sold by his brothers, out of envy, as a slave to the Egyptians for 20 pieces of silver, the historical question of coins is important because they would only appear later, however gold and silver were already used in the barter business.
Thomas Mann’s work was written mainly to fight the Hitlerism that was growing in his country, it was not just about fighting against anti-Semitism, but mainly he perceived a growing authoritarian discourse present in Germany at his time.
Also the Brazilian Oscar Pilagallo in his book “The Adventure of Money” cites Thomas Mann and also Faust by Goethe in his work, and with this he tells the story of José.
In the context we have developed, the evolution of the noosphere, the importance of Thomas Mann’s text is that he manages to understand the Babylonian influence on Jewish tales, as well as after the Exile in Egypt they will also suffer influences, and later on from the Greeks and Romans.
The lesson we can learn from Joseph of Egypt is that God took a greater good out of an evil and redeemed Joseph’s brothers despite the crime they committed, the biblical story is not for those who think of revenge or hate, it is pure love the humanity.
The lesson of Esau and Jacob
12
Jul
There is a book by brazilian writer Machado
de Assis about two brothers, also called Esau and Jacob, one of whom was a monarchist and the other a republican, and who made their mother suffer because of the dispute between the two, the story narrated by Machado de Assis’s alter-ego, Counselor Aires, it deals with the struggle of the twin brothers Pedro and Paulo, in endless conflicts and reconciliations from their mother’s womb until the beginning of adulthood, and also their love for the young Flora Batista.
In the biblical narrative Esau is older and it also says that Jacob is born moments later according to the biblical interpretation “clinging to his sister’s heel”, by a strategy of deceiving his father (he dresses in furs because his brother had more hair) and despite the father Isaac recognizing the voice ends up deceived and blesses the son, in Jewish tradition the eldest is the patriarch who must follow the father in charge of the Hebrew people.
But Jacob will spend many years running from his brother Esau for having usurped him and when he goes to meet his brother he fights “a whole night with an angel” who, at the end of the fight, wounds him in the nerve of the thigh and he starts to limp after that, but at the end of the fight he gets what he wanted to “be blessed” despite what he had done (Genesis 32:26).
After the fight, the name Jacob will be renamed to Israel by the angel, which means the one who fought with God and the place of the fight that exists is called Penuel, near the ford of Jabbok (passage where the river is shallow), one of the tributaries of the river Jordan (photo).
The figure of Jacob has no historical proof, but the twelve tribes that are born from his descent, the famous twelve tribes of Israel, whose best known and cited in history and biblical narrative are to the north: Asser, Naphtali and Eastern Manasseh, in the center Manasseh, Dah, Zebulon and Ephraim, to the south: Judah, Reuben and Moab (from the desert), of the children of Israel still have Joseph (Ephraim and Manasseh), Benjamin and Levi, who were priests did not have territorial inheritance.
They formed a United Kingdom with different tasks, the official historiography registers it as the United Kingdom of Israel and Judah, since the descendants of David will come from the tribe of Judah, and registers it as in the period of 930 BC. to 730 B.C. when it was conquered by the Neo-Assyrians under King Shalmaneser V, who levied heavy taxes on the Israelites.
The lesson of Esau and Jacob can be read both for the current world polarization, and for “brother” peoples who fight for pieces of land and power.
Seeing far and blinding near
11
Jul
Recently James Webb’s special observatory
saw the most distant galaxy that man can ever observe, the galaxy called JADES-GS-Z13-0 (photo) is approximately 320 million years from the Big Bang, which for us is a great measure, for a universe of 13.5 billion years old means relatively a few seconds after the Big Bang (one of the theories of the formation of the universe).
On the other hand, we are witnessing an increasingly unstable, unfair, ruthless and dangerous world, and with a catastrophic nuclear danger close at hand, it seems that a good part of humanity treats everything as if it were normality, not caring much about the fate of the planet. and the civilizing process that is not stagnant, but regressing in frightening steps.
The strangeness of this discovery of the universe is at the same time that we find amounts of Carbon and Oxygen in these bodies, the same James Web discovered a little later that six more galaxies (Jades was discovered with another three “near”), which were very massive where bodies smaller than those found there were expected at the beginning of the Universe.
The discovery showed that they have masses of approximately 100 million solar masses, while the normal would be for younger galaxies smaller masses, our Milky Way for example “older” has a mass of 1.5 trillion solar masses.
Furthermore it is a nursery of stars, about three suns are born there every year, and their masses are poor in metals of chemical substances heavier than helium and hydrogen (remember that they are at the top of the chemical periodic table on the left and right ).
If this restores humility to the knowledge we have of the universe, the same does not happen with social scientists, anthropologists and paleontologists, who the more they discover about our origin on the planet, for example that Neanderthals and homo sapiens coexisted and even crossed paths creating a diverse humanity, little tolerant we are with races and cultures.
And intolerance means less peace, more dangers and now we don’t have stones, axes and bows, we have nuclear weapons and dangerous atomic power plants that are subject not only to human limits, but also to natural and geological ones.
The geosphere and biosphere depend today as never before in the history of the noosphere and on what we cultivate as a civilizing culture and as a vision of other cultures and races.
