The religions of ancient Egypt and Babylonia — John Shaqi
The religions of ancient Egypt and BabyloniaSayce, A. H. (Archibald Henry)
Religion
The religions of ancient Egypt and Babylonia
Sayce, A. H. (Archibald Henry)
Assyro-Babylonian religion; Egypt -- Religion
What was difficult to harmonise with the belief in the resurrection of the
mummy was the belief which made the risen man an “Osiris,” identified,
that is to say, in substance with the god Osiris, and not his old material
self. In the days, therefore, when Greek philosophy took it in hand to
systematise and interpret the theology of Egypt, the risen mummy drops out
of sight. The Khu, as we have seen, becomes the divine intelligence, which
for a time is enshrouded in the human soul; and this again needs the
envelope of the spirit, which sends the breath of life through the veins
before it can tabernacle in the body of man. The Hermetic books tell us
that while body, spirit, and soul are common to man and the beasts, the
divine intelligence is his alone to possess, stripped, indeed, of its
native covering of ethereal fire, but still the veritable spirit of God.
Ever is it seeking to raise the human soul to itself, and so purify it
from the passions and desires with which it is inspired by the body. But
the flesh wages continual war against it, and endeavours to drag the soul
down to its own level. If the soul yields, after death the intelligence
returns to its original state, while the soul is arraigned before the
judgment-seat of heaven, and there being accused by its conscience, the
heart, is condemned to the punishment of the lost. First it is scourged
for its sins, and then handed over to the buffetings of the tempests,
suspended between earth and sky. At times in the form of an evil demon it
seeks alleviation of its torments by entering the body of a man or animal,
whom it drives to murder and madness. But at last, after ages of
suffering, the end comes; it dies the second death, and is annihilated for
ever.
The good soul, on the other hand, which has listened in life to the voice
of the divine intelligence, and struggled to overcome the lusts and
passions of the flesh, obtains after death its reward. Guided by the
intelligence, it traverses space, learning the secrets of the universe,
and coming to understand the things that are dark and mysterious to us
here. At length its education in the other world is completed, and it is
permitted to see God face to face and to lose itself in His ineffable
glory.
I need not point out to you how deeply this Hellenised philosophy of Egypt
has affected the religious thought of Christian Alexandria, and through
Alexandria of Christian Europe. It may be that traces of it may be
detected even in the New Testament. At any rate, much of the psychology of
Christian theologians is clearly derived from it. We are still under the
influence of ideas whose first home was in Egypt, and whose development
has been the work of long ages of time. True or false, they are part of
the heritage bequeathed to us by the past.
Lecture IV. The Sun-God And The Ennead.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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