Where did the first form of government/education start?

[JohnB445]

I would assume the Hebrews started the first form of government and education.

What would this world even be like if God just let humans do whatever, and God never intervened? I don't think we would be here today.

 

[JacobKStarkey]

Whoever first lived in groups, whether nomadic or sedentary, would have had to create rules as well as to teach the children how to survive.

The forerunners of the Chinese, the Sumerians, and the Egyptians predated the rise of the Hebrews.

 

[SkyWriting]

I would assume the Hebrews started the first form of government and education.

What would this world even be like if God just let humans do whatever, and God never intervened? I don't think we would be here today.

Adam and Eve's offspring formed cities.

 

[Jonaitis]

I am convinced that the first institution of government began in Genesis 9:5-6, and prior to the flood "the wickedness of man was great in the earth" (Genesis 6:5), and people did what was right in their own eyes, and violence and vengeance was something taken into the hands of the individual. This was the first example of any sort of government we find in Scripture, and it is likely to have been implemented to restrain the sinfulness of man.

 

[Jonaitis]

The forerunners of the Chinese, the Sumerians, and the Egyptians predated the rise of the Hebrews.

Egypt was founded around 2188 BC.

Eber, the father of the Hebrew race, predates and lived during the days of Babel.

 

[Radagast]

I would assume the Hebrews started the first form of government and education.

Well, no, as it turns out.

Abraham came from Ur, and that had been a city with a government for centuries before Abraham came along.

There were kings in Egypt and Mesopotamia 5000 years ago, and other city-states before that.

As to education, we have Babylonian clay tablets with mathematics homework on them dating back to 4000 years ago. Writing goes back more than 5000 years in both Egypt and Mesopotamia, and educated scribes were needed to produce it.

 

[Radagast]

Egypt was founded around 2188 BC.

The first dynasty of Egyptian kings began before 3000 BC.

The Pyramid of Djoser, a very early pyramid, is from the third dynasty, around 2650 BC:

 

[Jonaitis]

The first dynasty of Egyptian kings began before 3000 BC.

The Pyramid of Djoser, a very early pyramid, is from the third dynasty, around 2650 BC:

I follow Ussher's work, over modern scholars, that Egypt was founded in 2188, Noah and the Flood was around 2348 BC. In the year 3017 BC, Enoch was translated into heaven.

Scholars agree, though, that David reigned around 1000 BC. From that alone, biblical chronogeneaologies and datings would place Moses near 1400 BC, and Abraham near 2000 BC...which makes Ussher's work more reliable.

 

[Radagast]

I follow Ussher's work, over modern scholars

The problem with that is that you run into actual recorded history, in both Egypt and Mesopotamia.

and the Flood was around 2348 BC.

That would be the end of the Fifth Egyptian Dynasty, or the beginning of the Sixth, halfway through building the pyramids, and just a few years before Sargon the Great of Akkad began his reign.

 

[Jonaitis]

The problem with that is that you run into actual recorded history, in both Egypt and Mesopotamia.

Ussher's work is from actual recorded history.

Chrono-geneaologies and other biblical data would contradict your dating, especially between Adam to Abraham, Jacob to Moses, Moses to Solomon, Solomon to the Exile. This is well-documented in Scripture, but also outside sources.

 

[JacobKStarkey]

Usher is not accurate as has been explained above.

 

[JacobKStarkey]

Actual facts place the rise of the Hebrews long after the first civilizations.

 

[ViaCrucis]

I would assume the Hebrews started the first form of government and education.

What would this world even be like if God just let humans do whatever, and God never intervened? I don't think we would be here today.

There were organizational structures emerging thousands of years ago before Abraham. The earliest likely would have been simple agrarian or semi-agrarian societies during or following the agrarian revolution about 12,000 years ago. That's also about the time the earliest human structures, such as Gobleki Tepe in what is modern Turkey were founded; though the exact purpose of Gobleki Tepe is still unknown.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[Resha Caner]

Most seemed to go to government when answering the question. It's also interesting how many people are equating government and civilization.

So how does the OP see the word "education" fitting into the question?

Government sponsored education, as we tend to think of it, was a very late development that didn't really get off the ground until the 19th century.

 

[JacobKStarkey]

Chrono-geneaologies and other biblical data do not contradict the factual data from Sumeria, from Egypt, and from China that date them to 3000 BC and beyond.

Even if using Abraham as a model for government and civilization, obviously he derived from the Sumerian civilization long extant between the Tigris and Euphrates.

 

[ViaCrucis]

Most seemed to go to government when answering the question. It's also interesting how many people are equating government and civilization.

So how does the OP see the word "education" fitting into the question?

Government sponsored education, as we tend to think of it, was a very late development that didn't really get off the ground until the 19th century.

It's hard to say when the first "government" arose. But we can look and find out when the earliest human organizational structures emerged that were more than simple nomadic hunter-gatherer societies, it was when humans began growing and raising their own food.

Society, by necessity, I'd suppose requires government; so it is inevitable that as human societies became more sedentary and agrarian that the most primitive forms of government would have evolved alongside.

Obviously hunter-gatherer societies also require some form of cohesion, so we can start pushing that back into the hundreds of thousands of years. Strictly speaking, in that sense, societal structure with some form of rudimentary "government" goes back much further than the first Homo sapiens, as even other primates have some form of complex social structure (at least more complex than, say, packs of wolves or herds of bison).

-CryptoLutheran

 

[Resha Caner]

Society, by necessity, I'd suppose requires government;

Sure, but I would contend that from a hierarchical sense government serves and is below culture rather than culture emerging from government ... with the U.S. being a possible exception. In the U.S. we tend to celebrate our government - our version of democracy - as one of our greatest accomplishments, which is something I don't really agree with (baseball is obviously the greatest contribution America has made to the world).

As I've said, my focus for my historical studies is the intersection of church, education, and cultural identity. Naturally, what is on my mind at the moment is my most recent read - a book called Yankees and God by Chard Powers Smith. It's a horrible piece of scholarship, but fascinating for the mindset it reveals from the 1950s. It blatantly promotes the idea that the U.S. is God's new chosen people, that we inherited that mantle from the Puritans, and that the real meaning of predestination is Manifest Destiny.