Egypt, Trunk of the Tree by Simson Najovits

 

Sumero-Egyptian versus Hebrew Approaches to the Sacred  Immanence and Diversity Vs. Transcendence and Unity (page 135)

 

The underpinning of the entire Egyptian religious and societal system lies in a magical, immanent, animist, unchangeable, multiple, material, artistic, hierarchical and pragmatic approach to the sacred. There was nothing transcendental or supernatural in the Egyptian religion; all the gods were immanent in nature in the sky, on the earth, or inside the earth, in animals, and in the divine pharaoh. Nature was made of Heka (magic) of millions, of diversity, and all the diverse parts were immanently divine, powerful, and possessed will. Egyptians believed they had solved the problems of negative forces and disorder demons- by their daily defeat in a system of ultimate harmony the maat order. Diversity in ultimate harmony was the heart of the Egyptian approach.

 

Basically this Egyptian approach did not differ from the Sumerian system, but it considerable consolidated and extended it. The Sumero-Egyptain system was man's first complex and coherent approach to the sacred.

 

The Hebrew approach to the sacred, as described in the Bible, represented a radical turning point in the history of religion. A transcendental, absolutely monotheistic god above nature and the elimination of a divine presence, or gods, in the elements of nature, prohibitions on sculpture and painting, elaborate ethics, human free will and the emergence of a "humanistic" personal god represented an approach which was diametrically opposite to the Sumero-Egyptian approach.

 

It is frequently said that the fundamental difference between the Sumero-Egyptian and the Hebrew approaches to the sacred was the belief in many gods vs. A single god and the declared falsehood of all gods except Yahweh. In fact, this is only one of the basic differences. The Hebrew view started from the approach of taking the divine out of nature and putting it above nature. It is this transcendental approach that is key to the Hebrew view and it is more fundamental and more radical than the invention of monotheism.

 

For the Hebrews, a sole transcendental god implied that diversity was not intrinsically deeply diverse, there was an immediate unity from god. Rather than a struggle between order and disorder in nature, there was a struggle between good and evil. The Hebrew approach was transcendental, non-animist, unitary, spiritual, ethereal, proto-egalitarian, idealistic, abstract and literary.

 

Without ever abandoning the faith and intuitive belief of the Sumero-Egyptian approach, the Hebrews, over the centuries, developed abstract reasoning and a questioning attitude which was a timid precursor of the later Greek rationalist approach. Though the Hebrews continued to employ magical reasoning, their definition of a transcendental, invisible god who was not present in the elements of nature and of man who had "dominion" over nature and the animals were the result of non-animistic abstract reasoning. This constituted a break with the Sumero-Egyptian system. It was a first rough recognition of the mechanist, amoral nature of nature, and of the relativity of man and his free will. Man was beginning the adventure of critical moral judgment and freedom.

 

Between the Hebrew and the Sumero-Egyptian, perhaps never in human history have the nature of two religions and two approaches to the sacred been so fundamentally opposed to each other. This deep enmity resulted in the extraordinarily intolerant view by mainstream Jews, Christians, and Moslems that everything before Moses was false; that only monotheism was true. This arrogant and intolerant view, which puts down everything before Moses is simply ridiculous. Unlike all other ancient texts, the Judeo-Christian Bible has been arrogantly proclaimed as factual and truth, and also as the only source of god's "revelation". Fortunately, most scholars now reject the notion that many parts of the Bible are automatically true merely because they are in the Bible.

 

Moses may be described more accurately as a turning point in the history of religion.

 

The Hebrew approach and the Sumero-Egyptian approach came to a head- on collision

and perhaps it could not have been otherwise.

 

The priority of the Sumero-Egyptian approach was ritual correctness

and the priority of

the Hebrew approach was moral purity; even if in practice the

Hebrews frequently relapsed

into ritual correctness. Nevertheless, each approach to the sacred

had its advantages and

disadvantages and much in common.

 

Manipulative magic was mankind's basic approach to religion. The

center of the Egyptian

system was heka, magic. Magic was the key to maintaining cosmic

order, and obtaining

protection and an afterlife. The Egyptian elaborated the most

complex system of magic

ever invented.

 

The Hebrew system was the first to undermine the basis of magic.

The prohibition of

manipulative magic in favor of a subtler magic – the belief in an

invisible god who could

not be moved by anything except ethical behavior – engaged a battle

against magic and

magical thinking: a great cultural upheaval. He cites Exodus 22:18

"Thou shalt not suffer a

witch to live." And Leviticus 19:26 "neither shall ye use

enchantment (magic), nor observe

times (look for omens)"

 

The Hebrews adopted an approach which was fundamentally magical and

mythological,

but in its own way could nevertheless credibly appear to be non-

magical and non-

mythological. Possibly one of Moses' greatest strokes of genius was

to understand that

the existence of a spiritual, invisible god and ethics could not be

credible if it were based

on crude, undisguised magic. Subtle, unverifiable magic was the

answer.

 

The Hebrews obviously believed that manipulative magic worked, but

because they saw it

as unethical and unspiritual they condemned its use and condemned

magicians to death or

banishment. In practice, the Hebrews were simultaneously

disdainful, envious, and

tempted by magic. They were proud of their great magicians, Aaron,

Joshua, Moses. The

Talmud admiringly admitted that "Ten measures of sorcery descended

into the world;

Egypt received nine, the rest of the world one."

Just as radical and new was the Hebrew ideal of tsadaquah,

righteousness and justice.

Righteousness was dependent on man's free will, on man as the

creator of his own

destiny. Opposed to the Egyptian maat correct behavior based on

conformity to the

operation of primeval nature. Maat meant conformity to the way

things are, to nature with

its good things and dangerous things, to nature that is neither

moral or immoral.

 

In their search for understanding, the Egyptians tended to

scrutinize the nature of nature,

they believed that nature did not tell lies. The tendency of the

Hebrews was to scrutinized

the nature of human nature, Human morality had to be above nature.

This developed into

the idea of god applying fairly a universal standard of ethical

behavior over everyone, not

just Hebrews.

 

The Hebrew interdiction against graven images and the non-

representability of Yahweh

was another fundamental opposition to the Sumero-Egyptian approach.

The Egyptian

approach to the sacred found its natural expression in the plastic

arts and architecture.

The Hebrews naturally found expression in literature.

 

The Egyptians exuberantly manipulated the mystery which allows man

to artificially but

concretely create meaning and reality which are at best

paradoxically more meaningful,

realer and more poignant than reality.

 

The Hebrews prohibited sculpture, and had a reticence towards

temple architecture; they

poured their immense concern for the sacred into a non-plastic

realm, into literature.

 

As a nomadic people, the Hebrews mundanely exercised a de facto

prohibition of

sculpture because of its problems involved in transportation.  The

highly sedentarized

Egyptians tended toward massive architecture and sculpture born of

possibility.

 

The two basic approaches to the sacred naturally produced very

different consequences.

 

Egypt struggled with the problem of ethics, but could not solve it.

The Egyptians

mundanely sought to live well and to continue to live well in the

afterlife, but they had few

of what monotheists and most people today would qualify as

spiritual concerns, even in

relation to their gods. The Egyptians did not waste much time

speculating why they were

here on earth, but devoted immense energy to devising magical,

materialistic technology

to survive after death. Decent or correct behavior was stressed,

but magic, not ethics, was

the key.

 

A central aspect of the monotheist approach to the sacred was the

attempt to link ethics

and religion and to justify it by the will of the sole

transcendental invisible god.

 

It is essential to see that viewing reality as polytheistic

diversity is as valid a theoretical

option as the monotheist unity. In the imaginary world of religion,

both views are equally

valid – there is no compelling reason to choose between a unifying

principle of diversity in

ultimate harmony and one which immediately sees the all as unity.

The problems

generated by polytheism are elsewhere. They are the near

impossibility of separating and

concretely evaluating magic, nature, gods and demons; the inflation

of needless gods; and

the innate weakness of creating gods with the same or overlapping

functions. All this

created an unwieldiness which made it difficult for polytheism to

incorporate subtler

human needs like strict ethics and rendered it incapable of coming

to terms even partially

with rationalism and science. It is difficult to imagine any innate

hierarchically based

polytheistic system being able, like Christian monotheism, to adopt

ideals of absolute

forgiveness and love.

 

The Hebrew's monotheism favored the thirst for ethics and justice.

Unwittingly, they also

created systems which proved better for at least confronting

rationality and the

mechanistic nature of the universe. It also permitted the

development of equality.

 

The modern atheistic movement constitutes a revolution that may

turn out to be a greater

upheaval than monotheism. Atheism is, like religions, often based

on an exclusive, central

way of looking at things, even when it denies that it is doing

this. It is often based on

finding the absolute truth, even if this truth is nihilistic or

"non-truth".

Nevertheless, atheism has grown into a force which could eventually

destroy all religion,

polytheistic or monotheistic. Atheism has finished the job of

undermining magic and

opened the road to undermining the very basis of religion.