Show Notes
🖤 Go deeper with the BLK SHP email newsletter: https://blkshpbible.substack.com/👥 BLK SHP Membership: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-WtbbMSGxVkNHarp5lq_GA/join👉 Get the Preview Bundle for my new book, Dynasty of Slaves, including the timeline graphic of Israel in Egypt: https://blkshpbible.substack.com/p/dynasty-of-slaves-free-preview-bundle🙏 Donate to BLK SHP: https://donate.stripe.com/fZu3co477b6rauWcMQd3i00Why does every ancient civilization, from the sun-scorched Giza plateau to the dense jungles of the Yucatan and the river valleys of Mesopotamia, share an identical architectural obsession? In this deep dive, we explore a theory that transcends simple engineering: that the pyramid is not merely a religious invention, but a profound cultural echo of a lost historical memory.In this episode, we investigate the "Mountain of God" thesis. We examine the idea that every ziggurat, pyramid, and stepped temple is an attempt to recreate the topography of a lost home. By analyzing the Akkadian term Ziggarratu, literally meaning "the summit of a mountain," we discover that these structures weren't just buildings; they were desperate architectural prayers designed to bridge the gap between a fallen world and a divine peak.Drawing on ancient Near Eastern archaeology, Mesoamerican "Flower Mountains," and the biblical imagery of Ezekiel 28, we explore the Garden of Eden as the original Axis Mundi, the primordial mountain where Heaven and Earth once met. From the "botanical portals" of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon to the staircase of Jacob’s Ladder (the Hebrew Sullam), we trace how humanity has spent millennia building artificial summits to pull the divine presence back into our reality.Finally, we look at the ultimate shift from stone and mortar to the Incarnation. Join us as we uncover the universal language of the ancients and rediscover the mountain we all once called home.📚 FURTHER READING- The Pentateuch as Narrative: A Biblical-Theological Commentary by John H. Sailhamer — https://amzn.to/4aDjgOp- The Lost World of Adam and Eve: Genesis 2-3 and the Human Origins Debate by John H. Walton — https://amzn.to/3N6tldH- The Temple and the Church's Mission: A Biblical Theology of the Dwelling Place of God by G.K. Beale — https://amzn.to/4kRZjGY
More from BLK SHP Bible Talk
Is humanity really 6,000 years old? The Bible never actually says that number, but here's how millions of Christians get there, and why the math might not hold up the way we've always assumed.In this video we look closely at Genesis 5, the genealogy from Adam to Noah that's usually treated as a straightforward chronology. But when you compare it to the other genealogies in Genesis, Genesis 4, Genesis 10, and even the two genealogies of Jesus in Matthew and Luke, a different pattern shows up. Not every genealogy in Scripture is tracking years lived.We'll walk through:- Where the "6,000 years" number actually comes from, and why it's not a direct quote from the Bible- Why Genesis 10 tracks nations, Genesis 4 tracks culture, and Genesis 5 does something else entirely- The Hebrew names in Genesis 5, read together, and what they might be quietly saying- The 600 year gap between the Hebrew text and the Greek Septuagint, and why two faithful manuscript traditions could disagree by that much- Why the ages in Genesis 5 might be marking covenant headship instead of a stopwatchThis video doesn't answer how old humanity actually is. That's next. Once you stop treating these genealogies as a countdown, the door opens to a different investigation entirely, and that's exactly where we're headed in the next video.Chapters:0:00 6,000 Years?4:47 Technical Details8:16 What is a Genealogy?17:19 Septuagint Timeline19:34 Theological ConclusionMy book, Dynasty of Slaves: https://amzn.to/4wD4wasMy Substack & Newsletter: https://blkshpbible.substack.com/
Videos mentioned:- https://youtu.be/0mtJLz8Fhrk- https://youtu.be/2rHOS5pDKMU- https://youtu.be/tqjIb6jHWP0Jasher essay: https://substack.com/@blkshpbible/note/p-197362578?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=1sac7zThere are books that used to be in your Bible. They sat between Malachi and Matthew for almost two thousand years, read by the apostles, quoted by Jude, printed in every King James Bible until the early 1800s. Then they disappeared. Almost nobody noticed.In this video I investigate what these books actually are, what's inside them, why serious scholars and church fathers took them seriously for centuries, and what really happened to get them removed. The answer isn't what most people think, and it involves a committee, a printing press, and a five-year public fight that ended with existing copies being pulped and printing plates destroyed.I also give you my verdict as both an academic and a pastor on where these books belong and whether you should be reading them.Topics covered:- The world that produced these books and why- The shape of biblical apocalyptic writing- What happened to the Apocrypha, from Jerome to Luther to 1826- Why the doubt about these books was legitimate- Where they actually belong alongside Bunyan, Tolkien, Lewis, and Blackaby- The Book of Jasher and why most copies floating around today are a deliberate fraudPlus: three member videos on How We Got Our Bible are open to everyone this week.
Get the full research behind this video in my book, Dynasty of Slaves: https://amzn.to/43XkQqbJoin BLK SHP Bible Notes on Substack for the written deep dives: https://blkshpbible.substack.comBefore Moses ever raised his staff in front of Pharaoh, he'd already been erased from Egypt's official history once.This video traces two stories that almost every retelling skips past. The first is political: an exiled general, branded a traitor and written out of the royal record, who came back to demand the release of an enslaved nation. The second is cosmic: a pantheon of gods that had spent centuries collecting worship that was never theirs, watching that worship dismantled one plague at a time.Each of the ten plagues targeted a specific Egyptian deity, from Hapi and the Nile to Ra and the sun itself. Exodus 12:12 names exactly who stood on trial that night: "for I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am the LORD."We'll also work through why Pharaoh's heart got hardened, what the historical record from Amenhotep II's reign reveals about what happened after the Exodus, and how a Midianite priest with no stake in Israel's covenant ended up confessing that the LORD is greater than all gods.Two thrones. Ten plagues. One God who never lost the fight.#Exodus #Egyptology #BibleHistory #Moses #TenPlagues #DivineCouncil #Archaeology
My Book: Dynasty of Slaves - https://amzn.to/4ut75ugMy Blog: https://blkshpbible.substack.com- Melchizedek video: https://youtu.be/b_QpN0VRndQ- Urmonotheismus video: https://youtu.be/Kp7qMJcknzw- Nimrod video: https://youtu.be/qbtnHTSySl0Archaeologists digging in the Sinai desert found ancient Hebrew inscriptions that seem to place a goddess named Asherah right next to the name of the God of Israel. Thousands of female figurines turned up in homes and villages across ancient Judah. Scholars looked at the evidence and reached a conclusion that's spreading everywhere now: the God of the Bible had a wife, monotheism was a late invention, and the Old Testament buried the real religion of real Israelites.So what does it all mean?
My book on the archeology of Israel in Egypt called "Dynasty of Slaves": https://a.co/d/0863S1B2My blog/newsletter where I write about biblical history and more: https://blkshpbible.substack.comMost people think Job is a timeless story about suffering...a righteous man, a cosmic wager, and a God who eventually shows up with no explanation. But there's a 2,200 year old note at the end of the oldest copies of Job that most people have never read. And it changes everything about who Job was, when he lived, and why his story was written.Job wasn't isolated from Israel's story. He was at the center of it.