Initial Reaction
Why not place a ban specifically on paintings? At this point in human history painting must have been commonplace.Same answer as shown in explanations regarding religion and pagan.
The Judaeo-Christian rewriters of African mythology, were specifically targeting Egypt because of all of the wondrous art, artifacts, statutes and monuments. They did not want people to continue to admire the Gods of Egypt that had been admired worldwide by all people. The Christian rewriters were also secondarily targeting Assyria, Babylon and Chaldea who were from the same Nile Valley family as the Egyptians. Naturally these Assyrians, Babylonians and Chaldeans were using the same or similar cultural practices as the Egyptians because they were Egyptians denaturalized, denatured, re-natured.
Further Examination
Initial reactions above are confirmed by Exodus 20. God has just “delivered us from evil” by emancipating the Jacob Israelite slaves from Egypt. God was trying to break these Egyptian relatives from Egyptian culture. This God of the Israelites is not a new God. This God is a new form of God based on Egyptian Gods). To put it briefly, this new God is a bits and pieces combination contamination of Egyptian Gods. The main contamination is to make this God primarily human. This is why God said: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.” More original than the King James Version above is The Complete Jewish Bible version in Exodus 20:“You are to have no other gods before me. You are not to make for yourselves a carved image or any kind of representation of anything in heaven above, on the earth beneath or in the water below the shoreline.”
Rewriters Couldn't Keep Up With The Lies
In 2 Chronicles 1, God granted Solomon wisdom and knowledge. Then, in 2 Chronicles 2, Solomon uses that wisdom and knowledge to plan a temple house of the Lord. To help him, Solomon's first wise thoughts were to find “a man cunning to work in gold, and in silver, and in brass, and in iron, and in purple, and crimson, and blue, and that can skill to grave with the cunning men that are with me in Judah and in Jerusalem, whom David my father did provide.” [David has also used makers of graven images, those with “the skill to grave” and cunning to work in multiple materials.] Solomon finally found someone who was “skillful to work in gold, and in silver, in brass, in iron, in stone, and in timber, in purple, in blue, and in fine linen, and in crimson; also to grave any manner of graving.” So Solomon built the temple and had it overlaid with graved (carved) cherubim and “image work.”“Image work” is word trickery. Image work in this verse means made of cast metal, which is the same thing as graven image and molten image and idol. The abominable golden calf made in the desert was image work. Further inconsistency is found in Exodus 25:18 when God told Moses to make cherubim of gold using “beaten work,” The CJB calls this hammered work. I'd like to see someone make two cherubim by simply beating on metal. Obviously graving was necessary and molten work was necessary. God told Moses to make a graven image. In Exodus 26:1 God calls this “cunning work” (crafted by a skilled artisan:CJB). In 1 Kings 6:29 it's called “carved figures” and is described using synonyms for “graven images.” Solomon did a lot of graving, graved and graven, that are called by different names. But we can't put it all on Solomon. I'm not sure how anything of any detail can be made without graving being involved.
What's Good For One King Is Bad For Another King
In 2 Kings 21 and 2 Chronicles 33 when Manasseh used carved images, he was a bad king. Why? Because Manasseh used images of the Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians or Chaldeans and not the narrow suffocating graven image of the newly formed Jacob Israelite Godhead. So in other words, it's not a graven image that's the problem, but rather that the graven image is not what the Israelites want it to be. The Israelites then, the non-original Jews now and the Christians and Muslims and Hindus and Buddhists and ... But to be fair to them, the Israelites, Jews and Christians are just acting like their self-proclaimed “jealous God.” God's jealousy is a common theme in this Bible. Who wants to be in love with a jealous person? Who wants to be in love with a jealous person who has all power to act out of jealousy, and tells you in advance that if you even act like you like someone else, I will punish you? Anyway, back to the discussion on graven images.Psalm 78:58 confirms what the “ten commandments” say about god being a jealous god. The Psalm is further proof that God just wants all Gods to look like the limited version of God of Judaism, Christ ianity, Islam and other religions. Plus only look human and male and not black. Then the hypocrisy contradictions continue into the New Testament:
(Romans 1:23) “And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things.” Here's the CJB version of the same verse. “In fact, they have exchanged the glory of the immortal God for mere images, like a mortal human being, or like birds, animals or reptiles!” (1 Corinthians 11:7) “For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man.” The Cross is a graven image.
The Ankh is a graven image.
Jesus on the cross is a graven image.
A Star of David is a graven image.
All statues and symbols are graven images littered throughout all societies and praised.
All symbols used in your religion, culture, society and traditions are graven images if they meet the criteria of any of the definitions above. In theory, all images are prohibited according to Exodus 20. In practice, it only applies to images Gods and their followers don't like.
By the way, jewelry is a form of graven imagery.
More Graven Images Hidden Under Other Names
(Numbers 21:8) “And the Lord said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live.” So God tells Moses to make a graven image of a serpent, then later God dissed that serpent in 2 Kings 18:4, “He removed the high places, and brake the images, and cut down the groves, and brake in pieces the brasen serpent that Moses had made: for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it: and he called it Nehushtan.” The serpent was a metaphor for Jesus according to John 3:14, “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up:” [so that anyone who looks upon the Son of man, shall have life].The serpent of Moses represented God's covenant of life to the people before Jesus was born and then replaced the serpent. The graven image that God told Moses to make was an okay thing. Graven images are okay and not okay in a consistent, one-sided way in many bibles. More powerful than the power of graven images and religions, is the power of context, definitions and meanings that always change with the Ages. We are in the midst of a double double shift.
