Forty days and forty nights.
The ministry of Jesus began after he had spent forty days fasting in the Judean dessert.
‘From that time Jesus began to preach and to say, ‘repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.’
Forty days was not an exact term in those days. It meant a long time, an expression for a large figure, twice the number of fingers and toes of a man ……..so Jesus spent some time in the dessert. And Jesus said, ‘One does not live by bread alone.’.
And his fasting, doesn’t mean that he went completely without food. He ate the sparce foods that were available in the dessert….the text of Matthew could imply an allusion to the wilderness which the Israelites wandered in the Exodus.
Moses and Elijah also fasted for forty days…………It seems that myths about forty day fasts existed in the Canaanite culture…..Moses endured his fast , Elijah was fed by ravens to endure..(.yuck crow carrion..)
God told Moses to collect 70 elders to see and hear God, but nowhere is there anything written about what was said by the Holy Ghost to the 70, nothing by the 70 elders, only what Moses said to them…’
But the decalogue was composed of myths that were abundant long before Sinai: … you shall have no other god, ‘I am a jealous god and will visit the inequity on the third and fourth generations of the childen of those who hate me’. And god told Jacob, ‘ go to Bethel and take away all the foreign idols… and Jacob hid them under an oak near Shechem.’ Stealing…garden of Eden, stealing the apple.. Killing…Cain slew Abel..False witness, ‘Satan , may we eat of the forbidden fruit ?’ 10th commandment…so when the woman saw that the fruit was good, and it was a delight to see, she took the fruit……
All before Sinai, all before the decalogue of Moses.
Forty days and forty nights. in the dessert can make you a little crazy………… Grumpy 7/14/12
foolsandhypocrites 