Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Lloyd Barre <barre AT c-zone.net>]

Dear Associates,

It's Sunday night and I have been thinking about the central verse of the
Old Testament in relationship to Egyptian religion.  What links the two is
not only Moses, but an understanding of God that is based upon the verb,
"to be."  In this fundamental respect, the two religions are identical. 
This is astonishing and most illuminating, for while we only have the
essence of the religion described to Moses, there are many Egyptian texts
that describe and illustrate it graphically.  Indeed, as far as I can tell,
this ontological religion permeates Egyptian culture.

I have been studying some Egyptian to get at their use of the verb.  What
is most striking is that the "religious" verb, Khepher, is a fully dynamic
concept.  It is does mean "to be" but "to become" (the scarab beetle is the
pictogram for the verb).  The Egyptians, unlike us Greeks, do not think in
terms of Being being static.  It did not enter their minds.

This helps us with the meaning of the Name,  Interpreted from its proper
context, it would be translated as "I am becoming what I am becoming." 
This rendering explains the use of the imperfect and of the commonly
impersonal particle, "aser."  

Egyptian thought lived in Israel and finally surfaced with in majestic epic
of the Priestly Writer, who certainly was very familiar with the Memphite
Theology.  One need only to compare his creation account to it see it
literary dependence.  When the Priestly Writer identified  El with Yahweh
and then with Elohim, he appears to have taken the idea of the Memphite
Theology in which Atum is conceptually "absorbed" into Ptah.  This is how
expressions of "lower consciousness" were theologically understood and
regarded.

We can draw another connection between P and Moses.  There were Levitical
priests.  This is confirmed by the presence of Egyptian names among the
Levites, like Hophni and Phineas, priest of Shiloh.  They were Egyptian by
descent and Levites, educated in Egyptian thought, as were all properly
educated Levites.   The Priestly Writer illustrates to what degree Egyptian
and Israelite traditions become integrated.  In is clear that P's Egyptian
roots dominate his presentation within for a foreign culture.  Some Levites
were like Hophni and Phineas, some like Eli, and some like P with most
somewhere in between.

If that were not enough, the same thinking emerges in the Johannine
community.  The essentially identify between two-fold: the verb "to be" and
divine triad of thought-word-deed (Life).  Although Egyptian thought
"arranges" things differently, they are the same religion with different
emphasis.  1 John calls it "The Word of Life" just as Ptah creates Life by
thought and word.  Ptah is functionally identical to the "Father." Ptah's
fiats do not become a second emanation but the effects of his word "gives
Life to all kas," also not made personal as we find in the Christian
concept of the Spirit as Life giving.  It appears to me that Johannine
Christianity has brought a Levitical tradition to the interpretation of
Christian faith.  To a personification of the Thought is now added Word and
Spirit and supplementing and defining their ontology.  Yet as products of
Hellenistic culture, their concept is one of being rather than becoming, a
change we can already see in the LXX translation of the Name--I am" became 
introductory to the declaration that God is
an active participle used as a substantive--"Being."  We can detect a
movement is which God is no longer regarded as Becoming but one it which
Being is a creation above which e transcends, thereby losing an
identification with all that becomes. God becomes the "Ground of all Being."
But for Egypt, God is All becoming and all that is becoming.

I think that this realization more than anything affected my theological
thought patterns.   It what sense is God both immanent and transcendent. 
Dumb question.  There is no distinct.  He is all.  Now when I go out, I try
to look at everything as the becoming of God.  I have found that this much
helps my understanding Egyptian culture--and the Old Testament, and the New
Testament.  With regard to it, the Johannine community offered by one
several approach to the interpretation of the life of Jesus.  But in its
favor, it can trace its roots back to "from the beginning," a lines can be 
drawn from Ptah to the Name, to E, to P, to the LXX rendering to John, 
particularly in the latter's allusion to Genesis 1:1, a composition based on 
the Memphite Theology, and on the Ego Eimi saying of John, that are based 
upon the LXX rendering of the Egyptian Name.  Ham, Shem and Japeth are all 
present in the NT, and Ham, not Shem is the elder.

Sincerely, 

Lloyd M. Barre, Ph.D.
The Ptah Institute
barre AT c-zone.net
www.angelfire.com/ca2/AncientIsrael



Lloyd M. Barre, Ph.D.
The Ptah Institute
barre AT c-zone.net
www.angelfire.com/ca2/AncientIsrael