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| The gist of the god-to-patriarch method of "god reduction" used by the Cohen Egyptians to make a new coded monotheism. [2] |
“In this way antiquity disposes of its sun-gods. The Hebrews turned [the gods] into Patriarchs. Adam, Abraham, Israel, were names of Saturn. Edom is Adam; and the ancient usage was to name the nation, the land or city after the chief god. The Greeks made these deities founders of tribes.”— Samuel Dunlap (1858), Vestiges of the Spirit of Man, citing Franz Movers (1841) [1]
| Song of Moses (Qumram cave scroll, c.70AD) | Song of Moses (Hebrews 1:16, c.100AD) | ||
| “Rejoice, O heavens, with him; and do obeisance to him, ye gods.” | “Rejoice, O heavens, with him; and do obeisance to him, ye angels of god.” |
“The reduction in the number of the gods of Egypt began when man first realized that certain gods were mightier than others, for he ceased gradually to worship those who had, in his opinion, failed to justify his belief in them, and transferred his allegiance to the gods who were able to give him the most help. In process of time the god or goddess of a certain village or town would obtain a fame and reputation for power which would outrival those of the deities of the neighboring cities, and the growth of the worship of such god or goddess would be accompanied by a corresponding decline in that of the gods in the towns round about.”— Wallis Budge (1904), The Gods of the Egyptians, Volume One (pg. 75)
“The houses of the gods, or temples, became larger and larger and more magnificent as increased wealth flowed into the country as the result of foreign conquest, but the gods remained the same, and the processions and ceremonies, though more magnificent under the New Empire, preserved the essentials of the early period. But if we examine the religious texts carefully it will be seen that the Egyptians were always trying to reduce the number of their gods, or, in other words, were always advancing from polytheism to monotheism.”— Wallis Budge (1904), The Gods of the Egyptians, Volume One (pg. 115)
“The process of reducing the fairy-godmother's coach-and-six to the status of a one-horse cab may be seen in the Gospel according to Luke in getting rid of Osiris. The pair of sisters, Martha and Mary, appear in this Gospel, but without their brother Lazarus, and also without the resurrection. After all that has now been done towards identifying Bethany with the house in Annu [Heliopolis] and the nest of the two sisters, the two sisters with Isis and Nephthys, and the Christ with Horus, it cannot be considered far-fetched if we look upon Lazarus as a form of the Osiris that was dead and buried and raised to life again. As to the name, the Egyptian name of the Greek Osiris is Hesar, or Asar. And when we take into consideration that some of the matter came from its Egyptian source through the Aramaic and Arabic languages (witness the Arabic Gospel of the infancy) there is little difficulty, if any, in supposing that the Al (article the) has been adopted through the medium of the Arabic, or derived from the Hebrew prenominal stem אל [AL], to emphasize a thing, as in ‘the Osiris’ [the mummy], which passed into the article Al for "the" in Arabic, and was prefixed to the name of Osiris as Al-Asar, which, with the Greek "s" for suffix becomes L-azarus. The connecting link whereby Al-Asar was turned into Lazarus, the Osiris, was in all likelihood made in the Aramaic language, which had its root-relations with the Egyptian. Hieroglyphic papyri are among its monumental remains, as well as the inscription of Carpentras.”— Gerald Massey (1907), Ancient Egypt, the Light of the Modern World, Volume Two (pgs. 264)
“Pantheonic adjustment is a form of [god family] manipulation to promote political ends, which, in Egypt, occurred thrice: when Ptah, Amen and Aten were declared supreme gods at different periods. Around 3000BC, the deity Ptah was declared the ‘supreme one’. He was the presiding deity of the city of Memphis from where King Menes ruled. Ptah displaced the deity Ra of Heliopolis, till then the overlord (see: Heliopolis creation myth, 3100BC). The priests fabricated a suitable mythology to support the claim. A very important document, the Memphite theology (see: Memphis creation myth, 2800BC), was brought out to legitimize Ra as the creation of Ptah. The occasion for this change-over was the unification of southern and northern Egypt. The purpose was political though the socio-religious point was put forth, namely the need to have one god at the apex of the pantheon in a unified nation. → [see: Hermopolis creation myth, 2150BC] ← By about 1971BC, the powerful noble families of the city of Thebes (see: Thebian creation myth, 2000BC), declared their deity Amen as the supreme god. In this case the deity Ra was incorporated with Amen who by 1870BC, during the reign of Senusret III, became Amen-Ra. In 1372BC, Amenhotep introduced a form of sun worship through his chosen deity Aten. He changed his name to Akhenaten, dropping 'Amen’ from Amenhotep and placing Aten in the second part of the name (see: Amarnan creation myth, 1330BC). Aten too fell after a period. The next king Tutankhaten changed his name to Tutankhamen and revived lord Amen. On all these occasions theologians and priests fabricated suitable mythologies connecting other deities in a subordinate relationship to the supreme deity of the moment.”— Govind Ghurye (c.1950), Publication (Ѻ); as summarized by Devadas Pillai (1997) in Indian Sociology Through Ghurye: a Dictionary (pg. 237)
