You posted:
“Pot meet kettle?”
My take is you are not really sure, this is expected.
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You posted:
“This explains so much”
You are disagreeing with Sir E. A. Wallis Budge and the British Museum, one of the most respected Egyptologists and museums in the world when it comes to African-Kemetic religion, history and culture.
You don’t know his works or what is housed in the British Museum.
Now that does explain so much.
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Paraphrasing from Wikipedia, … a lack of clear distinction between opinion and incontrovertible fact is no longer acceptable in BBS.
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I’m certain you mean 18th century. (I sometimes do that by mistake too. ;))
I’d be curious to see these citations as well, as 18th century freemasonry situated their origin myth heavily in the Biblical narrative, and as such held some well documented1 opinions about Egypt that I doubt @MakedaQueenofSheba would agree with.
1. Including some documents printed by America’s founding fathers. I’ve read the work that Franklin republished that details the supposed history of masonry. It heavily bases the organization’s status as an ancient order around Noah and Solomon.
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Sorry, I lied about that last thing being by last comment. Two things.
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Let’s say someone makes a general point and throws in a few examples not as evidence to make a case, but to point out some cases. What you’d want to do in that case is deal with the general point, not try to shoot down the example, since that doesn’t address the point (especially if you have turn to an ungenerous interpretation to do so).
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I hope you don’t think that Cosmo reflects what Americans actually look like, though if you do, you live in a parallel universe where America’s filled with pretty skinny white women with big boobs wearing low cut dresses photoshopped to fit into the narrow band of current social conventions of beauty.
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(I’ve lied a second time, since this is a third thing) If you want to say interpreting art is more reliable than genetic analysis for settling an account of what amounts to determining a person’s genetic makeup, and don’t see why there’s a problem there then it’s pretty clear we’re at an impasse.
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Hello, ex-Mason here (made it to Master Mason, and did it for years until I became a stereotype, converted to Buddhism, and left since I didn’t believe in a God and wasn’t qualified to participate). I’m not at all well versed in African-Kemetic religious mythology, culture and history, and to the degree that I know anything about it, it’s not because of the my association with the Craft.
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It is going to have to come back as a new reincarnation if at all to bother replying…
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I am sympathetic to and interested in Khemetic culture and African cultures generally, but insisting upon citing Wallis Budge and J.G. Frazer as The Ultimate Authorities is rather limiting. They are IMO good reads, and I have some of their books here which I have read. But this is all 100 year old scholarship! It’s great that they were some of the first English-speaking people to find value and interest in African cultures, but I think they truly represent the bare beginnings of such cultural study, certainly not any end-all be-all. Frazer particularly was keen on a nearly Jungian practice of seeking to find equivalences between all of the worlds mythologies, he pretty much stated that he was invested in finding such parallels everywhere. So using Frazer as a way to point out instances of possible appropriation encourages me to be skeptical. I am sure that there have been real currents of cultural influence, but these need to be untangled from far more general “perennial myths”/“collective archetypes” type speculations.
I agree that western culture still suffers from many blind-areas of ethnocentrism, but it seems that some progress has been made over the past 100 years.
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I’ve been to the British Museum (the Egyptian collections were huge and made me uncomfortable when thinking about how they were acquired, though I hadn’t made the Budge connection, now I like him less). I have the photos to prove it:
(Yes, this was mostly an excuse to post vacation pictures - the British Museum’s amazing)
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I liked this, but on second thought, I wonder if the banning is fair. Where was Makeda trolling? Unless there have been deleted posts that I missed, she seemed to only be “trolling” on a thread she created herself. I’m not saying that one can automatically post whatever one wants in a self-created thread. But, she doesn’t seem to have crossed any offensive lines. I grant she “tediously” kept repeating the same points without seeming to make any effort to genuinely discuss the thread’s topic. But if that’s all, personally I think the thread should have been simply closed.
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It was only commenting on the threads it created which were kinda touchy subjects to start with though always polite. I didn’t flag any of the posts but the recent posts of ‘i am right and everyone else despite any new evidence is wrong… lalala will not listen’ kinda put things into yeah trolling or just it had an agenda to push and not really here for the BBS at large.
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Yeah, it does seem harsh to pull out the banhammer, esp. given that the OCD was limited to one thread and that thread was seeming like it was winding down. The mystery person was a little obnoxious, but the sort that very over-enthusiastic people who are deeply sure they have an amazing insight can be, and it seems like just closing the thread or a mod noting that things were getting too OCD might have handled it without banning someone who was fun (if frustrating).
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Also if you can be banned for being tedious then I’m walking on eggshells.
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how tedious
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I’ve been attending a Torah study group at my temple. We read it very slowly, usually managing to parse a few paragraphs in each session. Our rabbi is very knowledgeable about the translation as she studied with the person who wrote it, and we also have a person in our group who grew up in Israel and reads Hebrew fluently. We have lots of interesting discussions about the translation as a result, and then also about the content.
It’s really the oddest thing. I like the group and as I’ve never been able to read the Bible on my own, it’s good to finally understand what the stories are.
But, on the other hand, I keep asking myself why we are reading this particular book which is such a poorly recorded history and which writes about a civilization that is so different from our own.
I generally believe that religion and myth tell a different kind of truth from logical truth; that they speak to subconscious parts of my minds. Yet, reading it so closely, I just keep thinking, “Am I here just for the bagels and company, because this one weird book.”
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That’s not unusual at all. Sometimes my rabbi & I can spend a ew hours one one or two lines going over language, commentary & relevant Talmud.
Personally I’m continually amazed at how I see connections between the people & motivations from that time & now.
There is a chassidic idea that all Jews are drawn to Torah by their pintele yid, a kind of spark in every Jewish soul.
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Yes, I gathered the slow approach was the traditional way to read Torah. Our rabbi emeritas has a group that reads that week’s reading in its entirety so you spin through it in one year. I’d like to do that one, too, as he is a great teacher as well, but the time of the meetings is not very convenient for me.
It is a lot of fun. I am enjoying the company and being a student. It feels very Jewish to study like this.
The emotional themes are still strong but their lives as tribal people can be hard to relate to; especially as a woman, and the way they perceived of gods, too.
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I found listening to long sections on audio was interesting too; I would sometimes listen to the whole of Isaiah, Genesis or one of the Book of the Twelve in one sitting, and maybe repeat that a few times before going more in depth. Listening is quite a different experience from reading, and often certain structural elements and parallels become clearer when you don’t have the text in front of you.
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It’s actually a great way to approach any book worth reading. Really sit on each passage for a while, turn it around in your mind, savor it.
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Ken, 25, is a mounted policeman with a difference, and what a difference…
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…any book WORTH READING… 
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