Introduction by M D Magee, Religion as a social phenomenon rather than a divine one Teachers with novel convictions start religions, but they have little influence upon the institutions that follow them. When any remarkable person gets...
moreIntroduction by M D Magee,
Religion as a social phenomenon rather than a divine one
Teachers with novel convictions start religions, but they have little influence upon the institutions that follow them. When any remarkable person gets a following, before long some of them declare the saint’s pronouncements as the absolute truth and appoint themselves as its key mediators. As the key to the master’s work, they interpret it and add to it until it becomes irrelevant to the newer generations of followers, who only know the institution and not the master.
It is the religious institutions that enormously influence people, not the founder. These visionaries included not only history’s greatest megalomaniacs, but also mystics, sages, apostles, prophets, magicians, bishops, philosophers, atheists and monks. Some aimed for independent deity, others realized their eternal union with God. Some anticipated godhood in heaven, others walked as gods on earth. Some accepted divinity by grace, others achieved it by their own will to power.
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Becoming Divine: Imhotep and Moses
An Introduction to Deification in Western Culture, David Litwa, an expert on the subject, wrote, "Some have called it the essence of sin, others the depth of salvation. Regardless of one’s evaluation of it, however, deification throughout Western history has been a part of human aspiration. From the ancient pharaohs to modern trans-humanists, people have envisioned their own divinity. "It is well known that in the second Temple period Philo deified Moses."
In fact, Moses's deification in Philo is a deeply contested issue. Depending on which passages one highlights, Philo seems to had both clearly asserted and strongly denied Moses's deification." There is no single form of deification -- indeed, deification is as manifold as the human conception of God --, but the many types are united by a set of interlocking themes: achieving immortality, wielding superhuman power, being filled with supernatural knowledge or love — and through these mean transcending normal human, or at least mundane nature.”
"Because later polemics established Jews and Christians as binary polars, distinguished mainly by their views on God’s being, scholars have not sufficiently explored how other Jews in the early Roman period, who stood outside the Jesus movement, conceived of how the divine could become embodied on earthly life. The first-century Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria often operates as the quintessential representative of a Jew who stressed God’s absolute incorporeality.
Here one may demonstrate how Philo also presents a means by which a part of Israel’s God could become united with human materiality, showing how the patriarchs and Moses function as his paradigms. This evidence suggests that scholarship on divine embodiment, in Egypt who created that union, has been limited by knowledge of later developments in Christian theology. Incarnation formulas (like the Sarx-Logos) found in John 1:14 were not the only way that Jews, in the first and second century CE, understood that God could become united with human form." --Deborah Forger
Humankind's earliest theory of salvation has been conceived and known in Ancient Egypt. Organized religion had its beginnings in ancient Egypt more than five thousand years ago, where religious beliefs molded political with spiritual concepts in a composite governance by a theocracy, or rule by divine guidance. In Egypt, where nature was not destructive, the gods were seen as kind and generous, well-disposed toward humanity. Egyptians believed that their gods had created Egypt as a sort of refuge or paradise of Maat, in justice and order within a world plagued with chaos and disorder.
Since the Mystery System offered salvation for the soul, it also placed great emphasis on its immortality. Like modern academia, Egyptian Mystery System was the center of organized intellectual culture. Plotinus, the Upper-Egyptian founder of Neoplatonic philosophy, defined this experience as liberation of the mind from its finite consciousness, to be whole, identified as limitless. This liberation was not only freedom of the soul from bodily impediments, but also from the vicious wheel of rebirth or reincarnation.
It involved a process of disciplines or purification rituals both for the body and the soul. The Egyptian Mysteries, according to Pietschmann, had three platforms for Esoteric students starting with ''the Mortals," i.e. students in probation, who were being instructed, but who had not yet experienced the inner vision. The Intellectuals, who had attained the inner vision, and had received the mind or 'Nous', and; The Creators, or Sons of Light, who had become identified as united with the Light , i.e. true spiritual consciousness.
In the "Book of the Master," Marsham Adams compared the cascading platforms as the equivalent of Initiation, Illumination and Perfection. For years they underwent disciplinary intellectual exercises, and bodily asceticism with intervals of tests and ordeals, to determine their fitness to proceed to further serious, solemn and awesome process of actual Initiation. The living practice of philosophy meant Harmony, or Music i.e. the adjustment of human life into harmony with God, until the personal soul became identified with God, when it would hear and participate in the music of the spheres.
It was therapeutic, and was used by the Egyptian Priests in the cure of diseases. Such was the Egyptian theory of salvation, through which the individual was trained to become godlike while on earth, and at the same time qualified for everlasting happiness. This was accomplished through the efforts of the individual, through the cultivation of the Arts and Sciences on the one hand, and a life of virtue on the other. There was no mediator between man and his salvation, as we find in the Christian doctrine, with reference to be referred to these subjects, as part of the Curriculum of the Egyptian Mystery System.
Maat was an ancient Egyptian female goddess, who represented truth, justice, balance and morality. Daughter of the Egyptian sun deity Ra and wife of the moon god Thoth, she served a kind of spirit of justice to the Egyptians. She decided whether a person would successfully reach the afterlife, by weighing their soul against her feather of truth, and was the personification of the cosmic order and a representation of the stability of the universe. The earliest writings where she is mentioned date back to the Old Kingdom of Egypt more than 2,300 years BC. The Egyptian culture was centered on order, everything had its due place in the world. This included religion, society and seasonal changes.
The goddesses Ma’at came to represent the concept of balance and order because many Egyptians needed to explain the world around them. She was the one that kept the stars in motion, the seasons changing and the maintenance of the order of Heaven and Earth. The opposing force of this was known in ancient terms as isfet, in Coptic slang as zeft, or chaos. Ancient Egyptians considered the desert beyond the River Nile valley to be chaotic; whereas, the area close to the Nile was considered orderly. Together, these two forces brought balance to the world in which they lived and was an important part of everyday Egyptian life.
The Divine Imhotep
Historians thought Imhotep to be a mythological figure until the late 19th century. C. E. Wilbour discovered the Famine Stela in 1890, carved in granite at the upper cataract of the Nile River near Aswan. The Stela records a seven year famine during the time of King Djoser, also known as Zoser, and names Imhotep as Chief Priest and architect to the King, a probable source for the story of the Hebrew Joseph. It tells how he advised the King in ending the famine. It also credits him as the architect of the first known pyramid along with its surrounding complex. Imhotep was a revered healer, architect, High Priest, and adviser to King Djoser.
What we know of Imhotep life is fascinating, he was unique physician of his time. Imhotep’s writings are the first to reject magic in dealing with illness, with the premise that illness was caused by the environment, not the gods. Imhotep is believed to be the original author of the content of the Edwin Smith Papyrus, the earliest known writing on medicine and its practices. The Papyrus contains anatomy information on trauma surgery, it contains the first known descriptions of cranial sutures, the external surface of the brain, and cerebral spinal fluid. It also contains the diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis of 48 medical issues. It is the earliest writing explaining trepanation, a means of relieving pressure on the brain.
