The pastor's sermon was about the first nine of the plagues on Egypt. The bulletin included a handout for sermon notes. On it was a column for each of the plagues and included a corresponding column of Egyptian gods. Exodus 12:12 says "against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment" so the pastor wanted to point out which Egyptian god were being judged by each plague. While I'm no expert on Egyptian mythology I did a lot of reading about it last year so I recognized the names. The list didn't look right so today I checked up to see why. First, he included Beelzebub for the curse of flies. Didn't think of Beelzebub as Egyptian. The name is a derivation of the Canaanite deity Baal. Besides, I would have picked Khepri since he was at times depicted w/ the head of a fly. Same thing w/ the plague on the cattle. The pastor picked Ptah but I would have gone w/ Hathor who looks half cow. The pastor instead had Hathor being the deity attacked by the plague of Darkness. I don't know why. I would have thought the obvious choice was the sun god Ra. The pastor had Geb down for 2 of the plagues: lice and also hail. Why judge the same god twice? I agree w/ Geb, the god of the earth, for lice (just from the way the Bible depicts the plague) but would have chosen Nut, the goddess of the sky, for the hail. While I can understand why the pastor might pick Sati, the goddess of river current, for the plague of turning water to blood, Sati was only worshiped in Upper Egypt. Think Hapi, the god of the Nile, would have been a better choice.
Obviously there are people who consider me pedantic when it comes to mythology. The way I see it, this time it was the pastor's fault for bringing the subject up in the first place.
1 comment:
Sounds like the pastor could've done better a better Google search if you ask me.
Rebecca
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