Interesting article about the personal names in the opening chapters of Genesis by Richard S. Hess over at The Bible and Interpretation. I wish I knew more about onomastics than I do. The Medieval Names Archive does a fantastic job of tracking the naming practices of the period roughly AD 500–1500, and there are several online sources for information about ancient Rome. If something comparable exists for the ancient world, I would appreciate a heads-up.
When this post by Barry Strauss showed up in my feed reader, I wondered what in the world a classical historian who has written about the Trojan War, the Battle of Salamis, and Spartacus’s slave revolt might have to say about the Jewish Festival of Lights. He really hits the nail on the head:
Chanukah commemorates a miraculous victory in a war in 167 B.C. A Greco-Macedonian kingdom, centered in what is today Syria, had tried to outlaw the Jewish religion in its homeland in Judea and to replace it with Hellenic culture. Many Jews, in fact, supported that goal. But that is no surprise, because Hellenism had enormous appeal.
Hellenism seemed to have everything going for it. It was up-to-date, sophisticated, and intellectually satisfying. It offered wealth, health, art, and glamour. It represented the entrance ticket to an imperial civilization. Hellenism offered the opportunity to think big.
Judaism sat at the opposite end of the scale. It was old, small, and poor. It had no empire. It had nothing to offer except faith, trust, love, and strength. But those things, it turns out, are items that the human heart cannot do without.
So the miraculous happened. A small band, burning with faith, went on to defeat an empire.
Read it all.
Life offline has kept me from finishing pondering the “African”-ness of ancient Egyptian spirituality for over a month. At last I’m back at it. As with all of my posts on African culture and spirituality, my objective is merely to summarize the conclusions of others while injecting little of my own opinions or conclusions. My main source is the excellent article by Leonard H. Lesko in the Encyclopedia of Religion, edited by Mircea Eliade. This article is included with other Religion, History, and Culture entries from the Encyclopedia of Religion in a very handy form as Religions of Antiquity, edited by Robert M. Seltzer (page citations are all from this resource).
My main question remains: What distinctively African features, if any, can be seen in the orthodox consensus of the early church? In other words, if Thomas Oden is correct that Africa Shaped the Christian Mind, what specifically (pre-Christian) African intellectual or spiritual impulses can be discerned in the faith of African Christians of the patristic era. Since many of these Christians hailed from Egypt, and since we have a wealth of documentation of the pre-Christian spirituality of Egypt, it would seem fruitful to see what connections might exist between ancient Egypt and the broad-brush African spirituality others have attempted to describe.
These previous studies have highlighted nine specific aspects that seem to be present in African spirituality. To be sure, many of these aspects are also present in other cultures. I’ll simply restate each aspect (in italics) and indicate something with respect to the Egyptian evidence.
1. God. Africans generally have a henotheistic belief system in which one supreme deity exists at the top of a vast hierarchy of lesser divinities. This supreme deity is the creator of the universe, is not capricious but just and caring, and for the most part remains transcendent from his creatures because it would not be safe for them to encounter God in God’s fullness.
In Egyptian, the word netjer (“god”) was used broadly to speak of all levels of divinity, “from the greatest gods to the justified dead” (50). According to Lesko,
Monotheism, if it ever existed in ancient Egypt, was never established as doctrine in any of the native religions. From almost all periods come texts that indicate the uniqueness of one or the other gods, usually some form of the sun god, but this monolatry or henotheism cannot be demonstrated to have the exclusivity necessary to fit the modern definition of monotheism. (50)
Whether they are more accurately portrayed as full-blown polytheists or as henotheists or even pantheists is a matter of scholarly debate. At various times in Egypt’s long history, the gods Amun and Re (not to mention Aten) seem to be depicted as aspects or emanations of a supreme deity. Lesko suggests the Egyptians arrived at a monolatrous or henotheistic theology by “syncretizing the names and aspects of various deities into powerful new gods.” By doing so, “the Egyptians widened the gap between the greatest god and all the rest” (50).
For example, the Book of Two Ways describes Re, the sun god, as “hidden, omniscient, provident, responsive, and just” (41)—precisely the characteristics Paris attributes to the supreme deity of African spirituality. And indeed, there are numerous references to “god” or “the god” in Egyptian texts, most frequently in reference to Re:
He is often called the neb-er-djer (“lord to the limit, universal lord”), and can indeed appear practically transcendent…. The only important point lacking here is a statement that no other god exists, but of course this can also be said of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. (50)
So apparently an African-style henotheistic arrangement of a supreme deity at the top of a hierarchy of lesser divinities and departed ancestors is not out of the question.
2. The Universe. The supreme deity created the world and all that is in it. The universe consists not merely of the material world perceived by the senses but of various unseen dimensions populated by various spiritual forces, from the neutral and impersonal “dynamism” or “vital force” to the realm of malevolent spirits to the realm of benevolent ancestors and sub-divinities. The presence of harmful spiritual forces suggests that the world is in some sense “fallen”; it is not entirely as the supreme deity planned it.
The aforementioned Coffin Text known as the Book of Two Ways describes Re as the creator of all:
Provide for men, the cattle of God, for he made heaven and earth at their desire. He suppressed the greed of the waters, he gave the breath of life to their noses, for they are the likenesses of him which issued from his flesh. He shines in the sky for the benefit of their hearts; he has made herbs, cattle, and fish to nourish them. (40-41)
I am not aware of anything like the “vital force” in ancient Egyptian spirituality, but it is beyond question that there was a concept of non-physical dimensions of reality, namely, the locations generally translated as “netherworld” (imbt) or “underworld” (duat), where Osiris presides over the dead. These realms appear to have originally been in the sky. Egyptians also conceived of an “undersky” (nenet) and “a topsy-turvy afterlife, so that one of the terms (duat) seems to have been relocated later” (49).
3. Community. To be human is to belong to the whole community, which is understood as a vast hierarchy including the supreme deity and all the lesser spirits, deceased ancestors as the principle link with the spiritual realm, the tribal king and other important leaders, down to the youngest members of the community. All of these exist in a vast network of reciprocal relationships in which everyone is enculturated to understand his or her responsibilities.
Egyptian society was clearly arranged in a hierarchial fashion, with the pharaoh at the top and a vast bureaucracy of viziers, priests, and provincial officials under him. Like an African tribal king, the pharaoh “seems to have been the principal intermediary between gods and men”:
He is shown making offerings, pouring libations, and burning incense before almost all the gods in all the temples. How much of the king’s time was actually spent in religious ritual is not known and probably varied from dynasty to dynasty and from one king to another. The large amount of civil authority delegated to viziers would have released time for more religious activities if that were desired. (55)
The social hierarchy spanned the divide between the living and the dead. Offerings and the expectation of communicating with departed ancestors also figured in Egyptian spirituality. As Lesko explains,
Many letters to the dead are also found, they were left with food offerings by living relatives to urge some specific action on their behalf in the spirit world. These usually mention past favors and show confidence in the deceased’s ability to effect change for righting the injustice (49-50)
Some individuals, even those who were not of royal birth, “attained a state of divinity far above the ordinary” (51), but of course we think most immediately of the cult of deceased kings with respect to the religious devotion Egyptians displayed toward their dead.
The deceased were also revered as part of the Osiris cult, in which
Every owner of a book of mortuary literature is given the title “Osiris,” and every deceased person named in tomb or stela has the epithet “true of voice” or “vindicated” with respect to the last judgment before this great god. (50-51)
4. Family. The family is the central institution of human existence. One cannot know how one should relate to a fellow human being without some recognition of how closely one is related through kinship ties. The family is structured in a patriarchal hierarchy from the oldest living male—who is thus closest to rising into the realm of the ancestors—to the youngest child. Furthermore, kinship is construed far broader than the modern “nuclear family” to include aunts, uncles, cousins, and even the entire village. The main purpose of the family is to produce children; doing so ensures that one will eventually become an ancestor whose memory is guarded even after one’s death.
There is no reason to doubt that the Egyptians were as patriarchal as any other ancient Near Eastern culture. Egyptians generally had large families (on average about five children would survive to adolescence) and women employed various magical aids to conceive rapidly. Polygamy was certainly known in Egypt, and not just among royalty. It is uncertain, however, how common it was for men in general to have more than one wife.
As described above, the cult of ancestors thrived in ancient Egypt, forging a connection between the living and their deceased relatives.
5. Human Nature. Humans have not merely a physical body but various invisible aspects which Imasogie describes as a “tripartite soul.” Each of these aspects has a particular function in how a person lives out his life. Furthermore, human personhood is always construed in terms of membership in a group (family, tribe, etc.). Personality is dyadic, not individualistic.
Egyptians conceived of human beings as possessing a number of non-material aspects. The ka is a replica of the physical body fashioned by the gods at birth, meant to ensure one’s survival into the afterlife. Later, sculptors and painters made ka-figures that could also be understood as “protecting genii” (49).
The term most closely approximating what we would call the soul was ba, which was thought to depart from the body at death. According to Lesko,
In at least one literary text, the Dispute of a Man with His Ba, this conscience or other self is present in life to be argued with and to help the person make up his mind after considering both sides of a question…. (49)
Another aspect of human nature was the akh or “spirit.” This is what remains apart from the body, or at least not limited by the body, after death. One’s goal for the afterlife is to become an “equipped spirit” or “perfect spirit” (akh aper).
Finally, there are the name and the shadow. The name (ren) was regarded as an essential element of every human individual, just as necessary for survival as the ka, ba, akh, and shadow. One’s name was assigned immediately at birth lest the person not come into existence. Egyptians imagined that a shadow (sheut) contained something of the person who reflects it. For this reason, statues of people and deities were sometimes referred to as their shadows.
6. Human Destiny. Humans exist on earth in order to actualize a destiny they chose for themselves pre-natally. Although there is no concept of “original sin” as such, it is possible to inherit a “bad destiny,” and in any case, one’s destiny is not set in stone—it is possible to overcome a bad destiny or to thwart a good one through personal choices and supernatural intervention.
In Egyptian theology, a child’s destiny was determined at the time of birth by the gods—either Mesenet (or Meskhent), the goddess of childbirth, or (from the New Kingdom on) by Shay, the personification of destiny, fate, or luck. Shay represents the span of years and the degree of prosperity a person may expect to enjoy. The Instruction of Amenemopet emphasizes the futility of pursuing riches by pointing out that no one can ignore what is fated. He is related to birth into this world and rebirth into the next.
The Egyptians must not have thought fate could never be contravened, however, for the abundance of magical aids and practices (see below) suggests that in some sense supernatural intervention could play a part in what outcomes one experienced.
7. Death and the Afterlife. Death represents the transition to the realm of the ancestors, where the departed continue to serve as patrons of the family and community of which they were a part in life. As such, the dead are given elaborate funerary rites and are continually propitiated through various sacrifices in order to secure their favor.
It should go without saying that the Egyptians had a robust conceptualization of the afterlife. Intricate preparations for the afterlife were, in fact, basic to their entire civilization. Beginning in the First Intermediate Period, the afterlife became an aspiration of all Egyptians and not merely the king. While kings continued to occupy a special place in the realm of the dead, the afterlife was now also open to others who could afford the necessary rites. Thus the concept of the afterlife became a kinder one, envisaged as the continuation of mortal life, with all its activities, pleasures and privileges.
Death was considered merely a staging point for one’s entrance into the abode of the dead, where one continued in some sense to commune with one’s surviving relatives and stood in a position to grant them favors based on one’s status among the netjeru (“divinities”).
8. Ethics. The summum bonum is the well-being of the community, and an individual’s moral development is geared toward actualizing this goal. A good moral character includes such virtues as beneficence, forbearance, practical wisdom, improvisation, forgiveness, and justice.
Accepted social behavior in Egypt was largely determined by funerary beliefs and cultic obligations. The concept of maat (“truth” or “harmony”) was central. Maat represented the original state of tranquility that existed at the creation of the universe, and may also be understood as the commonsense view of right and wrong as defined by the social norms of the day. Ethics was focused on communal obligations construed within the context of a hierarchial class structure enforced by an official religion and authoritarian laws. Egyptians were expected both to please their superiors and protect those who were under them.
Part of preparing for the afterlife involved spiritual rites, sacrifices, and the like, but part of it was also doing good works and avoiding evil deeds (59). Their motivation for ethics was tied to their understanding of being somehow connected to the divine, and this connection implied certain obligations with respect to other members of the community: “Men, who are created in the likeness of God, and for whom heaven and earth were created, must worship God, and provide for their fellow men” (41).
As a side note, Paris described improvisation, defined as “the creative use of received tradition, applying old wisdom to new challenges,” as an aspect of traditional African ethics (The Spirituality of African Peoples, 146). Similarly, Lesko identifies “syncretism” and “a multiplicity of approaches” as two characteristic features of Egyptian religious literature:
In the case of descriptions of the afterlife, the Egyptians could on the one hand place separate, mutually exclusive descriptions side by side without indicating that one is better or more accurate than another; on the other hand, they could combine in the same document aspects from different traditions in a new, apparently superior, composite, and theoretically logical entity. Perhaps this was one way of dealing with the problem of conservatively maintaining the old while also accepting the new. (59)
9. Spiritual Warfare. The world is a dangerous place inhabited by malevolent spirit beings and human occult practitioners who harness impersonal “dynamism” and consort with spirits for destructive ends. Divination, sacrifices, and protective talismans can protect a person from spiritual assault.
Magic was clearly a significant aspect of Egyptian life. It was considered a gift of Re, and there are also references to books containing the secret knowledge of Thoth. Some Egyptian magic spells are preserved in the funerary literature. Egyptians relied on magic to prolong life, alter fate, help in romance, and combat physical and mental afflictions (52). Egyptian medical texts reveal that they relied on magical potions, poultices, or salves to treat the vast majority of human ailments (53).
Magic was also used to overcome one’s enemies, as is seen in the Execration Texts. As Lesko describes,
These bowls or figurines, inscribed with a fairly standard selection of the names of Egypt’s foreign and domestic enemies plus all even thoughts, words, and deeds, were deliberately smashed to try to destroy any and all persons and things listed thereon. (53)
Lesko himself addresses the survivals of ancient Egyptian religiosity in a brief section at the end of his essay (58-59). He notes, for example, the use of the ankh symbol and the udjat-eye in Coptic vestments and the birth of both cenobitic and eremitic monasticism in the Egyptian desert.
Among the more controversial possibilities Lesko raises are the cult of Isis as a possible influence on early Christian Marian devotion and the death and resurrection of Osiris as background to the Gospel accounts of Jesus. Both of these would, of course, be hotly contested by many Christians. Another controversial possibility is a connection between Egyptian triads such as that of Amun, Mut, and Khonsu and the later development of Christian ideas about the Trinity or the Holy Family. Finally, might Egyptian ideas about reward or torment in the afterlife have influenced Christian beliefs about heaven and hell?
Slightly less controversially, Lesko ponders “the question of Egyptian influence on the doctrines of the resurrection of the body and the communion of saints,” including such enduring traditions still present in modern Egypt of “the use of mourners at funerals, visits to tombs, the leaving of food offerings, and the burning of incense at services” (59).
Ken Schenck gives a blurb about How God Changes Your Brain, a new book about brain research that a group on his campus is discussing.
I’m just dropping in on the group today; I haven’t read the whole book. But one thing that stuck out to me in the chapter I read is the fact that the authors claim that the limbic system in the center of the brain is more primitive and older from an evolutionary standpoint. It is where primal emotions like anger, aggression, and fear are seated. By contrast, the frontal lobes and the anterior cingulate just below it are considered younger from an evolutionary standpoint and are the places where empathy, reason, logic, and compassion reside.
The chapter likens these two parts of the brain–the inner primal and the front outer rational–to two wolves that fight inside of us. Which one wins depends on which one you feed. This description is of course ripe with theological parallel–flesh versus Spirit, the yetzer hara or evil inclination of rabbinic Judaism, the id versus the superego of Freud.
But one of the most interesting things in the chapter (7) was the sense that the emotions of anger and fear actually inhibit good thinking. Such negative emotions can apparently even damage the anterior cingulate. So Spock and the Stoics were half right. The negative emotions of anger and fear do apparently impair our ability to reason well. But they were wrong to try to do away with all emotion. Apparently compassion and empathy can coincide with good thinking.
As usual, I’ll be celebrating Mercer’s fall break by editing Sunday school lessons. While I do so, here is a thought for the day about higher education from Camile Paglia:
Judging by the increasingly limited cultural and factual knowledge of graduates of elite schools whom one encounters working in the media, blue-chip sheepskins aren’t worth the parchment they’re printed on these days. Young people forced through the ruthlessly competitive college admissions rat race have the independence and creativity pinched right out of them. Proof? Where are the major young American artists, writers, critics or movie-makers of the past 20 years? The most adventurous and enterprising minds have gone into high tech. We’re in a horrendous cultural vacuum because our status-besotted education industry is geared toward producing not original thinkers but docile creatures of the system.
In this post and the next I want to examine the religiosity of ancient Egypt in order to see to what extent it may reflect the world view discernible in much later cultures of sub-Saharan Africa.
In How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind (InterVarsity, 2007), Thomas Oden writes,
There is an enduring pre-Christian traditional African religious past in the north of Africa during the entire first Christian millennium: Pharaonic, proto-Nubian [sic], Libyan, Capsian [sic] and Ghanian, reaching far back into African prehistory. It remains indigenously African even while being militarily forced to adapt to multiple colonial coercions. Early Christianity had to deal with these deeply ingrained traditional African cultures in the isolated villages of the Maghreb and Nile, not only with Greco-Roman civic religion. It was the strength of that traditional African religion transformed by Christianity that stood up to idolatrous Roman civic religion. The study of comparative metaphors makes clear how the motifs of ancient Pharaonic religion (such as spiritual ascent and eternal life) were echoed and included in the works of Origen, Athanasius and Pachomius. (65–66)
I am not sure what Oden means by reference to the Capsian culture, which I understand to be a Mesolithic culture located around present-day Gafsa, Tunisia, and which disappeared around 4000 BC. “Proto-Nubian” is also a bit of a head-scratcher, given that Egyptians had almost constant contact with fully developed Nubian kingdoms as early as the Middle Bronze Age (ca. 2000 BC). The patristic-era kingdom of Meroë was Nubian, not proto-Nubian. It is safe to say there were no stone-age Capsians or proto-Nubians around during the first thousand years AD!
These minor terminological issues not withstanding—and they’re probably due to my ignorance, not Oden’s—I am willing to believe that Oden is right about the African cultural influence on the Christian beliefs and values of the likes of Cyprian and Athanasius, but it is frustrating that he puts so little meat on those bones! It is precisely this paucity of detail that has inspired me to learn a bit more about African cultures, particularly in terms of religion and spirituality, in an attempt to grasp more accurately what Oden is attempting to prove.
Oden is certainly correct that a number of different indigenous African cultures existed along the southern coast of the Mediterranean in the first centuries AD, and that early Christianity intersected with these cultures. Oden’s contention is that this cultural cross-fertilization helped produce the consensual orthodoxy of the patristic era.
Furthermore, these North African cultures were connected by trade with their sub-Saharan neighbors. And where there is trade, there is cultural (and often genetic) cross-fertilization. It is therefore relevant to Oden’s thesis that trans-Saharan trade between the Mediterranean and sub-Saharan Africa existed from prehistoric times. The Berbers of North Africa extended in antiquity from Siwa Oasis in Egypt all the way to Morocco, Mauretania, and even the Niger River valley, the eventual site (by about AD 400) of the kingdom of Ghana in West Africa. At the other end of North Africa, Egypt was connected to the Nubian kingdom of Meroë and the later kingdom of Aksum (in what is now northern Ethiopia and Eritrea) by means of a maritime trade route that followed the Red Sea down to the Arabian Sea, thus connecting the Mediterranean world with India. This route was being used a hundred years before the birth of Christ. Needless to say, there are also far older connections between Egypt and Nubia in present-day Sudan. The land of Punt, Egypt’s long-time trading partner mentioned in several ancient texts, was almost certainly a place located somewhere south of the Sahara, perhaps straddling Africa and the Arabian peninsula near present-day Ethiopia.
We are therefore justified in trying to situate the religiosity of ancient Egypt within an African cultural milieu. We must be careful, however, not to minimize the great cultural diversity of Africa. To claim that ancient Egypt was “African” is not to claim that ancient Egyptians and modern-day traditionalist Nigerians or South Africans would see eye to eye on every issue. But they would, perhaps, recognize each other as (distant) spiritual kin. Contemporary scholars of African culture are thus quick to point out the limits of any discussion of “generic” African culture, even when they insist that common values, beliefs, and symbols exist across the continent. For example, Osadolor Imasogie writes,
This author is very much aware that Africa is a large continent with diverse peoples and culture. In that case no one may be so presumptuous as to claim to describe African religions and world views in the singular. However, in spite of the differences, there is a core of Africanness that runs through their cultures and religions. In view of this one may speak legitimately of an African world view, the local peculiarities notwithstanding. While the writer concedes that his perception of the African world view bears the stamp of the part of Africa he experiences, he is convinced that the rest of Africa is not too far off from his description. (Guidelines for Christian Theology in Africa [University Press, 1986] 53)
Likewise, in The Spirituality of African Peoples [Fortress, 1994], Peter J. Paris writes,
Undoubtedly, many will argue that the immense diversity of cultures there prohibits any generalizations whatsoever about Africa. Yet in my judgment respect for the rich diversity of African cultures need not lead to such a conclusion. Rather, as certain generalizations can be made about Americans or Europeans without implying widespread uniformity among them all, similar generalizations can be made about African religious and moral understandings without violating either the integrity or the particularity of tribal groups. Calling some things European or American or Asian is analogous to calling other things African. Since we do the one with impunity, why not the latter? (27)
Based on the work of Paris and Imasogie, I propose to evaluate ancient Egyptian spirituality in terms of the following “ennead” of world view issues:
1. God. Africans generally have a henotheistic belief system in which one supreme deity exists at the top of a vast hierarchy of lesser divinities. This supreme deity is the creator of the universe, is not capricious but just and caring, and for the most part remains transcendent from his creatures because it would not be safe for them to encounter God in God’s fullness.
2. The Universe. The supreme deity created the world and all that is in it. The universe consists not merely of the material world perceived by the senses but of various unseen dimensions populated by various spiritual forces, from the neutral and impersonal “dynamism” or “vital force” to the realm of malevolent spirits to the realm of benevolent ancestors and sub-divinities. The presence of harmful spiritual forces suggests that the world is in some sense “fallen”; it is not entirely as the supreme deity planned it.
3. Community. To be human is to belong to the whole community, which is understood as a vast hierarchy including the supreme deity and all the lesser spirits, deceased ancestors as the principle link with the spiritual realm, the tribal king and other important leaders, down to the youngest members of the community. All of these exist in a vast network of reciprocal relationships in which everyone is enculturated to understand his or her responsibilities.
4. Family. The family is the central institution of human existence. One cannot know how one should relate to a fellow human being without some recognition of how closely one is related through kinship ties. The family is structured in a patriarchal hierarchy from the oldest living male—who is thus closest to rising into the realm of the ancestors—to the youngest child. Furthermore, kinship is construed far broader than the modern “nuclear family” to include aunts, uncles, cousins, and even the entire village. The main purpose of the family is to produce children; doing so ensures that one will eventually become an ancestor whose memory is guarded even after one’s death.
5. Human Nature. Humans have not merely a physical body but various invisible aspects which Imasogie describes as a “tripartite soul.” Each of these aspects has a particular function in how a person lives out his life. Furthermore, human personhood is always construed in terms of membership in a group (family, tribe, etc.). Personality is dyadic, not individualistic.
6. Human Destiny. Humans exist on earth in order to actualize a destiny they chose for themselves pre-natally. Although there is no concept of “original sin” as such, it is possible to inherit a “bad destiny,” and in any case, one’s destiny is not set in stone—it is possible to overcome a bad destiny or to thwart a good one through personal choices and supernatural intervention.
7. Death and the Afterlife. Death represents the transition to the realm of the ancestors, where the departed continue to serve as patrons of the family and community of which they were a part in life. As such, the dead are given elaborate funerary rites and are continually propitiated through various sacrifices in order to secure their favor.
8. Ethics. The summum bonum is the well-being of the community, and an individual’s moral development is geared toward actualizing this goal. A good moral character includes such virtues as beneficence, forbearance, practical wisdom, improvisation, forgiveness, and justice.
9. Spiritual Warfare. The world is a dangerous place inhabited by malevolent spirit beings and human occult practitioners who harness impersonal “dynamism” and consort with spirits for destructive ends. Divination, sacrifices, and protective talismans can protect a person from spiritual assault.
It should be noted that many of these factors exist in somewhat different forms in other pre-industrial cultures the world over. To claim that any of them is distinctly African is not to deny that other cultures have arrived at a similar place. Distinguishing, for example, between an African conceptualization of dyadic personality and a Semitic or Far Eastern one may well be an exercise in futility. Some of these factors may end up proving more diagnostically powerful than others, and certain specific expressions of some of these values may prove more significant than the broad-brush descriptions I have provided. Any input, correction, or clarification from my longsuffering readers is thus heartily welcomed! Still, I’m hopeful that a survey of Egyptian spirituality according to the rubric I’ve suggested will be instructive despite its limitations.
Digital Dialects has language learning tools for a boatload of (modern) languages, including several on my “would love to learn” (or know better than I do) list and a few more that would just be cool.
Alcuin, once asked the famous question, “Quid Hinieldus cum Christo? (What does Ingeld have to do with Christ?)” He was reproving the monks of Lindisfarne for listening to and studying the secular poetry of Beowulf. His question begs raises the question, “Should we read anything other than the Bible?” How could Beowulf or Homer or (to use a more recent example) Harry Potter be beneficial for the Christian?
Just noticed at the Centuries of Darkness website:
March 2009. A fascinating article has been published by Dr Rupert Chapman (British Museum), entitled “Putting Shoshenq I in His Place” in the Palestine Exploration Quarterly 141:1 (2009), pp. 4-17. Chapman presents a fresh analysis of a question that has intrigued archaeologists since 1926, when a fragment of a victory-stela of Shoshenq I (founder of the Egyptian 22nd Dynasty) was found at the site of ancient Megiddo in Israel – it was found in the ‘dump’ from earlier excavations, but which stratum did it originally belong to? While reattributing such a find a century after it was discovered is fraught with difficulty, Chapman deduces that it was orginally set up in Stratum V, which by cross-dating with his work on the pottery of Samaria must have been a 9th-century BC level. He concludes: “On the basis of the purely stratigraphic argument set out above, it becomes clear that Sheshonq I and his expedition should also be dated to the 9th century BC.” Chapman’s paper is the first study (outside Centuries of Darkness) to argue from archaeological grounds that the conventional dating of Shoshenq I to the late 10th century BC is incorrect.
I don’t buy the CoD model for chronological revision, but I’m thoroughly convinced it is incorrect to identify Shoshenq I with the biblical “Shishak” (1 Kgs 14). Tel Rehov carbon dating, pottery stratigraphy from Shoshenq destruction levels in Jezreel, and now the context of Shoshenq’s victory stele in Megiddo all argue for a ninth-century rather than a tenth-century date for his campaign.
Related:
Last week Scot McKnight posted on the genealogies in the book of Genesis and why he doesn’t believe the immense ages of the patriarchs should be taken literally. I’ve written a bit about the issue, spelling out the various factors involved in a little more detail. Since I’ve been working off-blog on ancient chronology matters, I figured I’d share my thinking with you.
First, there are differences in the lifespans and ages at which one patriarch “begot” the next, depending on whether one follows the Masoretic Text, Samaritan Pentateuch, or Septuagint. Furthermore, Josephus gives dates that generally follow the Septuagint, but in at least one instance prefers the Masoretic Text and in a few places is quite unique. For a basic overview, see “Biblical Chronology and Dating of the Early Bible” by Curt Sewell and “Biblical Old Testament Chronology.”
The data may be summarized as follows:
| BEFORE THE FLOOD | ||||
| Gen. | Patriarch | Age at Begetting | Remaining Years | Total Lifespan |
| 1 | Adam | MT: 130 LXX: 230 Sam: 130 Jos: 230 |
MT: 800 LXX: 700 Sam: 800 Jos: 700 |
MT: 930 LXX: 930 Sam: 930 Jos: 930 |
| 2 | Seth | MT: 105 LXX: 205 Sam: 105 Jos: 105 |
MT: 807 LXX: 707 Sam: 807 Jos: 707 |
MT: 912 LXX: 912 Sam: 912 Jos: 912 |
| 3 | Enosh | MT: 90 LXX: 190 Sam: 90 Jos: 190 |
MT: 815 LXX: 715 Sam: 815 Jos: 815 |
MT: 905 LXX: 905 Sam: 905 Jos: 905 |
| 4 | Cainan | MT: 70 LXX: 170 Sam: 70 Jos: 170 |
MT: 840 LXX: 740 Sam: 840 Jos: 740 |
MT: 910 LXX: 910 Sam: 910 Jos: 910 |
| 5 | Mahalaleel | MT: 65 LXX: 165 Sam: 65 Jos: 165 |
MT: 830 LXX: 730 Sam: 830 Jos: 730 |
MT: 895 LXX: 895 Sam: 895 Jos: 895 |
| 6 | Jared | MT: 162 LXX: 162 Sam: 192 Jos: 162 |
MT: 800 LXX: 700 Sam: 685 Jos: 700 |
MT: 962 LXX: 962 Sam: 847 Jos: 962 |
| 7 | Enoch | MT: 65 LXX: 165 Sam: 65 Jos: 165 |
MT: 300 LXX: 200 Sam: 300 Jos: 200 |
MT: 365 LXX: 365 Sam: 365 Jos: 365 |
| 8 | Methuselah | MT: 187 LXX A: 187 LXX B: 167 Sam: 67 Jos: 187 |
MT: 782 LXX A: 782 LXX B: 802 Sam: 653 Jos: 782 |
MT: 969 LXX: 969 Sam: 720 |
| 9 | Lamech | MT: 182 LXX: 188 Sam: 53 Jos: 182 |
MT: 595 LXX: 565 Sam: 600 Jos: 595 |
MT: 777 LXX: 753 Sam: 653 Jos: 777 |
| 10 | Noah | MT: 500 LXX: 500 Sam: 500 Jos: 500 |
MT: 450 LXX: 450 Sam: 400 Jos: 450 |
MT: 950 LXX: 950 Sam: 900 Jos: 950 |
| AFTER THE FLOOD | ||||
| Gen. | Patriarch | Age at Begetting | Remaining Years | Total Lifespan |
| 1 | Shem | MT: 100 LXX: 100 Sam: 100 Jos: 110 (Arphachsad born 12 years after the Flood) |
MT: 500 LXX: 500 Sam: 500 |
MT: 600 LXX: 600 Sam: 600 |
| 2 | Arphachsad | MT: 35 LXX: 135 Sam: 135 Jos: 135 |
MT: 303 LXX: 400 Sam: 303 |
MT: 438 LXX: 535 Sam: 438 |
| 3 | Cainan | LXX: 130 | LXX: 330 | LXX: 460 |
| 4 | Shelah | MT: 30 LXX: 130 Sam: 30 Jos: 130 |
MT: 403 LXX: 330 Sam: 403 |
MT: 433 LXX: 460 Sam: 433 |
| 5 | Eber | MT: 34 LXX: 134 Sam: 34 Jos: 134 |
MT: 430 LXX: 370 Sam: 430 |
MT: 464 LXX: 504 Sam: 464 |
| 6 | Peleg | MT: 30 LXX: 130 Sam: 30 Jos: 130 |
MT: 209 LXX: 209 Sam: 209 |
MT: 239 LXX: 339 Sam: 239 |
| 7 | Reu | MT: 32 LXX: 132 Sam: 32 Jos: 130 |
MT: 207 LXX: 207 Sam: 207 |
MT: 239 LXX: 339 Sam: 239 |
| 8 | Serug | MT: 30 LXX: 130 Sam: 30 Jos: 132 |
MT: 200 LXX: 200 Sam: 200 |
MT: 230 LXX: 330 Sam: 230 |
| 9 | Nahor | MT: 79 LXX A: 79 LXX B: 179 Sam: 79 Jos: 120 (? Text says “Nahor begat Haran“–is this a copyist’s error?) |
MT:69 LXX A: 225 LXX B: 125 Sam: 69 |
MT: 148 LXX A: 304 LXX B: 304 Sam: 148 |
| 10 | Terah | MT: 70 LXX: 70 Sam: 70 Jos: 70 |
MT: 135 LXX: 135 Sam: 75 |
MT: 205 LXX: 205 Sam: 145 |
Another factor, as may be seen above, is the presence of an additional name in the LXX that is not found in any of the other texts. Cainan is placed between Arphachsad and Shelah. In the LXX, Cainan begat Sala at age 130 and lived a total of 460 years. Cainan’s right to inclusion is established for Christians by his presence in Luke’s genealogy of Jesus (Lk 3:36)—a reading attested by Sinaticus, Vaticanus, and indeed almost the entire textual tradition. Although he is not mentioned in the Masoretic Text, the Samaritan Pentateuch, or Josephus, he is found in the pseudepigraphal book of Jubilees and, according to Polyhistor and Theophilus of Antioch, in the chonology of Demetrius (3rd century BC).
In general, it is easier to explain how a name was dropped from the original text than to explain a name getting added. On this point at least, the weight of the evidence would seem to favor his inclusion. It therefore raises the possibility of additional “gaps” in the genealogical record, and suggests that the numerical information in the LXX should be given due consideration.
Second, it is highly likely that there are gaps in the genealogical data, as has been noted by conservative scholars for over a hundred years. William Henry Green’s seminal article “Are There Gaps in the Biblical Genealogies?” appeared in Biblitheca Sacra in 1890! (See also here).
Why would there be gaps in the genealogies? A generation might be skipped for any number of reasons. Most obviously and mundanely, the genealogist simply may not have had the necessary data to include every generation. Another rather mundane explanation may be that a person’s father died young, perhaps even during the child’s formative years. In that case, a man might be reckoned “the son” of someone who was actually his grandfather. It must be noted, of course, that in Hebraic thought one’s “father” need not be one’s immediate male ancestor—any male ancestor up the line can qualify for that title. That is why Matthew can call Jesus both “son of David” and “son of Abraham.”
Gaps might also exist in the service of some greater numerical pattern. For example, Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus is arranged in three sets of fourteen generations (Adam to David, David to the Exile, and the Exile to Christ). This phenomenon may be related to the numerical value of the name David, the sum of whose Hebrew letters (d-w-d) add up to fourteen. Although less often suggested, Luke’s list of seventy-seven names might have been intended to represent eleven sets of seven names each. According to Metzger, Luke’s genealogy
Similarly, the Jewish Seder Olam Zuta (6th century AD?) organizes the data from the biblical genealogies from Adam to King Jehoiakim into five sets of ten generations each. By any of these approaches, it might have been deemed desirable to omit mention of less noteworthy ancestors in the service of some mnemonic or symbolic arrangement. One might also suggest that the redactor(s) of Genesis intentionally “skipped” generations in their genealogies in order to place Lamech (ch. 4) and Enoch (ch. 5) in the culturally significant number seven position in their respective lists, and to arrive at an even ten-generation span from Adam to the flood (ch. 5) and from the flood to Abraham (ch. 11).
In terms of the Genesis genealogies, one easily perceives a stylistic element at work in the treatment of numbers. For example, in Genesis 4 the descendants of Cain are listed in seven generations, with the seventh patriarch (Lamech) being the father of three sons. In Genesis 5, the descendants of Seth come to ten generations, with the tenth patriarch (Noah) also being the father of three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Finally, in Genesis 11 there are ten generations—from Shem to Terah in the LXX text or from Noah to Terah in the Masoretic and Samaritan texts. Terah, of course, was also the father of three sons: Abraham, Nahor, and Haran.
Another variation on the presence of gaps in the genealogies comes from Harold Camping in Adam When? Camping suggests that, with a few exceptions where a direct father-son relationship is required by the text, the lifespans of the patriarchs line up so that the years of one patriarch begin when the years of the previous patriarch end. In other words, the first of Enosh’s 905 years begins with the last of Seth’s 912 years, and so on. It is not at all certain that this is the correct way to read the text. At any rate, it arrives at dates that are far too early for both the creation of Adam (11,013 BC) and the Flood (4990 BC).
Third and most controversially, there is the question of whether the incredible lifespans attributed to the early patriarchs are to be taken literally or figuratively.
Of course, the only acceptable reading for the most conservative is a face value assertion that the patriarchs did in fact attain the tremendous ages the Bible describes. The challenge then is to account for the gradual diminution of lifespans noted after the Flood.
The advantage of these approaches is that it is simple to understand and upholds a high view of Scripture. The distinct disadvantage is that it runs contrary to all that is known of human longevity in the prehistoric period. For example, W. J. MacLennan and W. I. Sellers have detailed much of what can be known on this subject in “Ageing through the Ages.” While MacLennan and Sellers concede that calculating the age of adult bones is more problematic than that of children and adolescents, the margin of error is in the range of a decade or so—not centuries! They conclude that, by using a variety of techniques of measurement simultaneously in a multifactorial equation, an approximate age can in fact be determined.
For the Neolithic period, here are some pertinent figures
MacLennan and Sellers conclude: “From the Palaeolithic to the late Mediaeval period the mean life expectancy of humans increased from between 20 and 30 years to 30 to 40 years. Exceptions are that kings, aristocrats and other wealthy individuals lived almost as long as current political, professional, and commercial leaders.”
Many Young Earth Creationists theorize that reduced metabolic rates in distant past would cause human bones to look much younger than they actually are. Thus, they might produce measurements within the expected ranges for human lifespans of the periods, but in fact be older by a factor of ten or more. This and similar theories are nothing but special pleading of the “heads I win, tails you lose” variety. If the bones of a centuries-old human can be produced, it proves the literal reading; if they cannot it proves that environmental conditions were vastly different in primeval times! This renders the contentions of the literalists beyond the possibility of falsification, and thus beyond the bounds of science.
It would seem that the only way to preserve a literal reading of the patriarchal lifespans is to limit them to a tiny minority of the human race—the theory of a recent Adam. Such a “special race” possessing lifespans of nearly 1,000 years would most fittingly be called “sons of God” (or “sons of the gods”) by other mere mortals. This of course would tie in to Nachmanides’ theory that the “sons of God” of Genesis 6:1-4 were humans who possessed somewhat more of the divine image than the more ordinary “daughters of men.”
Some appeal to a supposed practice in Arabian genealogies and family histories of a whole clan being represented as a single individual. This practice is cited in passing here, but I have yet to find additional confirmation. Sometimes appeal is made to Acts 7:16, where the name Abraham may refer to the clan or family of Abraham but cannot refer to the patriarch himself: he was already dead at the time of the financial transaction referred to, which was actually conducted by his grandson Jacob according to Genesis 33:19 and Joshua 24:32.
David Rohl suggests this possibility in Legend (Century, 1998). He claims, for example, that the statement “Adam lived 930 years” should be taken to mean “Adam’s tribe or dynasty endured for 930 years.” That Seth, for example, was a son of Adam need not mean any more than that he was a descendant of Adam–perhaps a grandson or great-grandson.
Bruce Vawtner in A Path Through Genesis (Sheed & Ward, 1956) likewise suggests,
Both the Hebrews and Sumerians/Babylonians knew that many more than ten generations had elapsed during these periods. To bridge over the enormous gaps in time, therefore, both of them assigned tremendous ages to the few names that they possessed. While the Babylonians simply set down astronomical figures, none of them under twenty thousand years, the Hebrew author has been comparatively moderate, and above all, he made his ten generations serve a religious purpose.
This reading would preserve the overall reliability of the numbers in Genesis 5 and 11 (excepting for possible gaps) without committing one to accepting the lifespans literally. The disadvantage comes in those instances where real family relationships are clearly involved, most notably with Noah and his sons and Abraham and his immediate descendants.
The existence of three separate textual traditions immediately alerts us that there are some problems with the transmission of the numbers in Genesis 5 and 11. One possibility appeals to conventions of rendering numerals in Sumerian cuneiform. The cuneiform symbol for 100 was first used for 10. If the ages of pre-flood patriarchs were originally recorded in this form of writing, a later scribe may not have been aware of the symbol’s original meaning and inadvertently multiplied their ages by a factor of ten. Using the LXX ages of begetting, this renders very believable lifespans, with patriarchs begetting in their late teens or early twenties and living on average around ninety years.
The cuneiform mistranslation theory works well with the pre-flood patriarchs, but breaks down in the postdiluvian period, where even using the LXX figures patriarchs begin begetting in their early teens and living, by the end of the period, only into their twenties before meeting their demise. In other words, if mistranslation accounts for the extreme ages of the pre-flood patriarchs, the ages of the post-flood patriarchs can only be explained by appealing to an entirely different form of mistranslation! On the whole, this does not seem credible, and at any rate I am not aware of any theory as to the nature of this second form of mistranslation.
This theory assumes that the numbers in the text have a symbolic rather than a literal meaning. Pett in particular has discussed the development of numeracy in the Ancient Near East and the use of numbers in the earliest biblical texts (“The Use of Numbers in the Ancient Near East and in Genesis“).
Pett has marshalled the evidence for the rise of numeracy in approximately the same time and place as the rise of literacy, namely, in Sumeria at the end of the third millennium. Before this point, it is highly unlikely that ancient peoples would have used numbers in ways that we are accustomed to doing in our modern, scientific age. In this period, counting was in its earliest stages of development and numbers often had qualitative rather than quantitative significance.
In Sumerian folk-literature, only the numbers 3 and 7 were ever used, both signifying completeness. In many preliterate cultures, counting only proceeds as far as three. The Sumerian words for “one,” “two,” and “three” are also used for “man,” “woman,” and “all”–pointing to a time when the entire world could be numbered as me, my wife, and everybody else. In several ancient languages, the word for “three” also means “many.”
The number 5 was used in Sumeria for calculating the fallen after battles, suggesting a “more” historical setting than the myths and rituals where 3 and 7 predominated. In Egypt, the number 5 became predominant, also with connotations of completeness (cf. the number of fingers on one hand).
As counting and numeracy developed, seven also came to symbolize completeness, often of a divine sort. This phenomenon likely comes from an early time when one could number the fingers of one hand, and then had to rely on memory to add six and seven to one’s repertoire.
Early significance was also given to 10 (ten fingers) and its multiples, especially 40 (one of the earliest known Sumerian number signs) and 60. The Sumerians eventually settled upon a sexigesimal (base-60) counting system, but for many centuries it existed side by side with a decimal system. Another early Sumerian number sign denoted 15, which may be understood to be the sum of 3 + 5 + 7.
How does all of this apply to the lives of the patriarchs? Even if the symbolic approach is deemed valid, some possible lines of interpretation are admittedly more convincing than others. Some require such convoluted mathematical gymnastics as to be clearly incorrect. But what can we observe? First, we must note the pervasive use of numbers ending in 0, 5, or 7. Even if the numbers are accepted as generally correct (either for individual lifespans or eras of tribal ascendancy), they are likely rounded off and not exact. In the LXX, most of the pre-flood patriarchs lived after begetting for 700 years plus another figure of symbolic significance: 7 (Seth), 15 (Enosh), 40 (Cainan), or 30 (Mahalaleel). Enoch, who is associated in Jewish tradition with the promulgation of a solar (365-day) calendar, lived to be 365 before God “took” him. Lamech’s total age of 777 (Masoretic Text) seems especially significant.
Some numbers end in 2 that can be derived from the addition of 12—another important number especially in Hebrew thought. For example, Jared begat Enoch at age 162, which may work out to 100 + 50 + 12 (or perhaps 70 + 70 + 10 + 12). Some other numbers end 4 that can be derived from the addition of 7. For example, Eber begat Reu at age 34 (Masoretic Text), which may perhaps represent 10 + 10 + 7 + 7. The number 17 (10 + 7) shows up in several places in the lives of the later patriarchs (Joseph was 17 when he was sold into Egypt; Jacob lived in Egypt the last 17 years of his life).
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