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This question continues to baffle modern day scholarship with parallelisms of the past drawn by cognitive circles of academia and intelligentsia. Appropriately, the question then becomes and is very similar to the conundrum: “which came first the chicken or the egg.”
There are many theories on parallelisms (depending upon your bias) existing between Judeo-Christianity and Egyptian theology.
Some believe that by following the “Massey-Diop method” puts us on a path of understanding the parallels of the two cultures.
In his essay of January 08, 2002, The Egyptian Great Year and Christianity, C. Gilkes writes,
Gilkes further states, “The deep symbolism and ‘typology’ of the ancient Nile Valley sacred science, provides us with the means of understanding the complex process, the writers of the sacred Jewish and Christian texts may have wanted to convey to their devotees. It is not as simplistic as the priests and pastors make it out to be.”
Therefore, some scholars argue, and their followers believe that Judeo sacred texts may have derived from the belief that Egyptian theology became the rightful owner by sustaining language and writing skills.
Others assert that the Gilgamesh Epic of Sumeria, which admits the Flood Story of the Pentateuch (Old Testament) as an integral part of the epic, links the Old Testament to Mesopotamian sources. This becomes yet another parallel between Judeo-Christianity and Sumerian cultures.
It is interesting to note the Flood Story is accepted as an essential element of Gilgamesh, not because of its considerable historical importance, but because it prepares the climax of the epic, where Gilgamesh ends his search for eternal life.
So a common belief among all cultures of antiquity, through time, and at times, led to a syncretism–a combination of different forms of belief or practices. And likewise, the spells and vignettes of the Egyptian Book of the Dead (Coming Forth by Day), to a great degree, parallels the Twelfth Tablet translation of Gilgamesh, Descent into the Netherworld, as an unfortunate and unsatisfactory conclusion. For example, in the Egyptian Coffin Text, Spell 74:
Remarkably, within these ancient established archaeological cultures; Egyptian, Babylonian and Judaism, lies a commonality and claim to original deity and worship of resurrection.
Humans have always easily anthropomorphize the unknown (invisible) unseen beings or powers into entities that influence us. Anything not understood (and still for some) was delegated to this other realm or spiritual world. Cultures have always worshiped resurrection. Many Greeks worshiped Hercules, believed to have been born of Zeus and a human mother, underwent trials, died and resurrected to sit with Zeus (sound familiar).
Human sacrifice was also not uncommon among ancient cultures where the unfit and children were “culled-out” for the good of the tribe. Indeed, there is the stele from the Tophet, a sacred precinct of Carthage (Phoenicia), with accounts of child sacrifice reporting that beginning at the founding of Carthage in about 814 B.C., children were buried there, sacrificed to Baal and Tanit.
What happens when humans attempt to create human origins for the polyglot of Myths and Legends of ancient cultures?
As early as 1933, the lacuna of knowledge in anthropomorphic terms, becomes quintessential through one of our own, Professor John G. Jackson. In these books; Was Jesus Christ A Negro? and The African Origin Of The Myths and Legends Of The Garden of Eden, Jackson provides this salient fact, “there is much evidence that the Christian Savior was a black man, or at least a dark man.”
As you read further into Jackson’s work, he surmises this, “though it is generally held by historians and scholars that the Hebrews got their theories of the creation of the world and the fall of man from the Babylonians, who received their civilization from a still earlier culture of the Mesopotamian valley, a people known as the Sumerians. According to ancient tradition, the Sumerians were originally a colony of Ethiopians. Though the Ethiopians were spread far and wide over the earth in recent times, their original home has generally, been considered to have been located in the heart of Africa.” (emphasis added)
Prof. G. Elliot Smith, the British anthropologist, gained no little fame by advocating the views that all civilization and religion originated in ancient Egypt. In other words, academia/intelligentsia holds that civilization and religion originated in one particular location and spread from there to the rest of the world.
Smith created the “Diffusion School” of thought. Jackson puts it this way, “the science of comparative religion, as this review attempts to show, leads us to the conclusion that the diffusion school of anthropology has the best of the argument... However, since we now have evidence that the civilization of Egypt is not the oldest in the world we do not abandon our diffusionism position by tracing civilization back to an earlier culture center.”
Jackson quotes Prof. George Rawlinson, ANCIENT MONARCHIES, in this manner, “Moses of Chorene, the great Armenian historian, identifies Belsus, king of Babylon, with Nimrod. He adopts a genealogy for him only slightly different from that in our present copies of Genesis, making Nimrod the grandson of Cush and the son of Mizraim. He thus connects in the closest way Babylonia, Egypt and Ethiopia proper.”
Interestingly, Rawlinson asserts, “to the traditions and traces here enumerated must be added the biblical tradition which is delivered to us very simply and plainly in the precious document, the TOLDOTH BENI NOAH or BOOK OF THE GENERATIONS OF THE SONS OF NOAH. The sons of Ham, we are told, were Cush, Mizraim, Phut and Canaan...and Cush begat Nimrod...and the beginning of his Kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar.
So, the Babylonian kingdom is assigned to a people distinctly said to have been Cu****e(Cush) by blood and to have stood in close connection with Mizraim or the people of Egypt, Phut or those of Central African and Canaan, or those of Palestine.”
Finally, we have Jackson’s personal opinion, “My personal opinion is that these myths and legends of the Garden of Eden, besides many others of similar nature, had their origins in the heart of Africa, in very ancient times and were spread by way of Egypt to the rest of the World.”
Many thanks to Mwalimu Imara Mwadilifa (Dr. E. Curtis Alexander) for resurrecting, if you will, this early profound scholarship of Jackson, copyrighted in 1933; because today (2008) or some 75 years later, we are still confused about so-called parallelisms.
Clyde C. Coger, Jr.
Man of the Pew
...
Is Judeo-Christianity a progeny of Egyptian Theology?
This question continues to baffle modern day scholarship with parallelisms of the past drawn by cognitive circles of academia and intelligentsia. Appropriately, the question then becomes and is very similar to the conundrum: “which came first the chicken or the egg.”
There are many theories on parallelisms (depending upon your bias) existing between Judeo-Christianity and Egyptian theology.
Some believe that by following the “Massey-Diop method” puts us on a path of understanding the parallels of the two cultures.
In his essay of January 08, 2002, The Egyptian Great Year and Christianity, C. Gilkes writes,
“ Cheikh Anta Diop and Gerald Massey made this easier by comparing linguistic patterns; in a private conversation with Charles Finch, Diop showed how the Jewish scriptures borrowed extensively from its Egyptian parent.”
Gilkes further states, “The deep symbolism and ‘typology’ of the ancient Nile Valley sacred science, provides us with the means of understanding the complex process, the writers of the sacred Jewish and Christian texts may have wanted to convey to their devotees. It is not as simplistic as the priests and pastors make it out to be.”
Therefore, some scholars argue, and their followers believe that Judeo sacred texts may have derived from the belief that Egyptian theology became the rightful owner by sustaining language and writing skills.
(Sources: Echoes of the Old Darkland, Charles S. Finch; Ancient Egypt the Light of the World, Gerald Massey; African Origins of Civilisation: Myth or Reality?-Cheikh Anta Diop)
Others assert that the Gilgamesh Epic of Sumeria, which admits the Flood Story of the Pentateuch (Old Testament) as an integral part of the epic, links the Old Testament to Mesopotamian sources. This becomes yet another parallel between Judeo-Christianity and Sumerian cultures.
(Source: W.G. Lambert and A. R. Millard, Atra-hasis: The Babylonian Story of the Flood[oxford,1969])
It is interesting to note the Flood Story is accepted as an essential element of Gilgamesh, not because of its considerable historical importance, but because it prepares the climax of the epic, where Gilgamesh ends his search for eternal life.
So a common belief among all cultures of antiquity, through time, and at times, led to a syncretism–a combination of different forms of belief or practices. And likewise, the spells and vignettes of the Egyptian Book of the Dead (Coming Forth by Day), to a great degree, parallels the Twelfth Tablet translation of Gilgamesh, Descent into the Netherworld, as an unfortunate and unsatisfactory conclusion. For example, in the Egyptian Coffin Text, Spell 74:
“O Horus of the Netherworld, you have swum to Pe”[cult city of Horus], expresses nearly the exact thought.
Remarkably, within these ancient established archaeological cultures; Egyptian, Babylonian and Judaism, lies a commonality and claim to original deity and worship of resurrection.
Humans have always easily anthropomorphize the unknown (invisible) unseen beings or powers into entities that influence us. Anything not understood (and still for some) was delegated to this other realm or spiritual world. Cultures have always worshiped resurrection. Many Greeks worshiped Hercules, believed to have been born of Zeus and a human mother, underwent trials, died and resurrected to sit with Zeus (sound familiar).
Human sacrifice was also not uncommon among ancient cultures where the unfit and children were “culled-out” for the good of the tribe. Indeed, there is the stele from the Tophet, a sacred precinct of Carthage (Phoenicia), with accounts of child sacrifice reporting that beginning at the founding of Carthage in about 814 B.C., children were buried there, sacrificed to Baal and Tanit.
(Source: Sergio Ribichini, The Phoenicians, 1988, p. 141)
What happens when humans attempt to create human origins for the polyglot of Myths and Legends of ancient cultures?
As early as 1933, the lacuna of knowledge in anthropomorphic terms, becomes quintessential through one of our own, Professor John G. Jackson. In these books; Was Jesus Christ A Negro? and The African Origin Of The Myths and Legends Of The Garden of Eden, Jackson provides this salient fact, “there is much evidence that the Christian Savior was a black man, or at least a dark man.”
As you read further into Jackson’s work, he surmises this, “though it is generally held by historians and scholars that the Hebrews got their theories of the creation of the world and the fall of man from the Babylonians, who received their civilization from a still earlier culture of the Mesopotamian valley, a people known as the Sumerians. According to ancient tradition, the Sumerians were originally a colony of Ethiopians. Though the Ethiopians were spread far and wide over the earth in recent times, their original home has generally, been considered to have been located in the heart of Africa.” (emphasis added)
Prof. G. Elliot Smith, the British anthropologist, gained no little fame by advocating the views that all civilization and religion originated in ancient Egypt. In other words, academia/intelligentsia holds that civilization and religion originated in one particular location and spread from there to the rest of the world.
Smith created the “Diffusion School” of thought. Jackson puts it this way, “the science of comparative religion, as this review attempts to show, leads us to the conclusion that the diffusion school of anthropology has the best of the argument... However, since we now have evidence that the civilization of Egypt is not the oldest in the world we do not abandon our diffusionism position by tracing civilization back to an earlier culture center.”
Jackson quotes Prof. George Rawlinson, ANCIENT MONARCHIES, in this manner, “Moses of Chorene, the great Armenian historian, identifies Belsus, king of Babylon, with Nimrod. He adopts a genealogy for him only slightly different from that in our present copies of Genesis, making Nimrod the grandson of Cush and the son of Mizraim. He thus connects in the closest way Babylonia, Egypt and Ethiopia proper.”
Interestingly, Rawlinson asserts, “to the traditions and traces here enumerated must be added the biblical tradition which is delivered to us very simply and plainly in the precious document, the TOLDOTH BENI NOAH or BOOK OF THE GENERATIONS OF THE SONS OF NOAH. The sons of Ham, we are told, were Cush, Mizraim, Phut and Canaan...and Cush begat Nimrod...and the beginning of his Kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar.
So, the Babylonian kingdom is assigned to a people distinctly said to have been Cu****e(Cush) by blood and to have stood in close connection with Mizraim or the people of Egypt, Phut or those of Central African and Canaan, or those of Palestine.”
Finally, we have Jackson’s personal opinion, “My personal opinion is that these myths and legends of the Garden of Eden, besides many others of similar nature, had their origins in the heart of Africa, in very ancient times and were spread by way of Egypt to the rest of the World.”
Many thanks to Mwalimu Imara Mwadilifa (Dr. E. Curtis Alexander) for resurrecting, if you will, this early profound scholarship of Jackson, copyrighted in 1933; because today (2008) or some 75 years later, we are still confused about so-called parallelisms.
Clyde C. Coger, Jr.
Man of the Pew
...
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