Ship of Fools: Akhenaten

Thread: Akhenaten Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by Anglo Catholic Relict (# 17213) on :

Good evening.

I have wondered for some time about Akhenaten.

Why did God choose to make his covenant with Abraham, who we are told was the first monotheist? Why didn't he make his covenant with Akhenaten, who was a Pharoah and a lot more powerful. It would presumably have saved a huge amount of trouble for everyone.

Alternatively, is it possible that Abram/Abraham was a follower of the Aten who ended up in Mesopotamia after Akhenaten died, but that huge chunks of of the story were lost along the way?

It does not seem credible that one single nomad decided one day to change from pantheist to monotheist, and founded a whole faith on the basis of that. Surely there must be more to it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akhenaten

Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :

I think that Akhenaten set up the religion so that he and his wife were the only means of communicating with the Aten, and that he had no skills with which to convert the priests of the other gods rather ruled him out. He didn't have that much power, since he could not set up something permanent.

Posted by Nick Tamen (# 15164) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Anglo Catholic Relict:
It does not seem credible that one single nomad decided one day to change from pantheist to monotheist, and founded a whole faith on the basis of that. Surely there must be more to it?

Does Torah really present Abraham as a monotheist or is he presented more as a monolatrist? I'm not sure that it's clear. I do think it's pretty clear that Abraham would not have seen himself as the "founder of a faith," but rather as the father of a nation which had a covenant with a specific god.

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

There is an entire novel dedicated to that proposition, Pillar of Fire by Judith Tarr.

Posted by TurquoiseTastic (# 8978) on :

Well. I suppose one of the running themes of OT and NT is that God chooses not the powerful and strong but the weak and obscure. So you might say that this is typical of God's modus operandi.

Posted by HCH (# 14313) on :

God may, of course, have made many covenants with one group of people or another throughout history and not informed us of the fact.

Posted by Anglo Catholic Relict (# 17213) on :

Thanks for the replies. I was not aware of the novel; I tend not to read anything modern so that might be interesting to look at.

It is a shame if God chooses to ignore perfectly good people just because they happen to be rich and powerful, in favour of those who are not. That seems a bit unreasonable to me, but what do I know?

As one of those totally unknown, totally obscure people I think I would prefer if God went and picked on the Mr Branson's of this world and blessed him for a change. I wonder if Abram felt the same way?

Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :

We have some record of Akhenaton's beliefs - though the idea of a One God is still not the same as unanimity as to who or what that one God is - but we only have the record of Abraham's descendants as to his.

IOW, foundational myths tend to be How We Got Here stories which explain and justify the present.

Posted by Alyosha (# 18395) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Anglo Catholic Relict:
Thanks for the replies. I was not aware of the novel; I tend not to read anything modern so that might be interesting to look at.

It is a shame if God chooses to ignore perfectly good people just because they happen to be rich and powerful, in favour of those who are not. That seems a bit unreasonable to me, but what do I know?

As one of those totally unknown, totally obscure people I think I would prefer if God went and picked on the Mr Branson's of this world and blessed him for a change. I wonder if Abram felt the same way?

I don't mean to be facetious, but I think Mr Branson has already been mightily blessed? God must be aware of inverse snobbery, but even Christ had a pop at the rich (although, in the case of the rich young man he did love him too).

Posted by fletcher christian (# 13919) on :

Two simple reasons:
1. Good old Akhen was actually a lunatic megalomaniac
2. The whole thing would have been fairly short lived and the story would have been dull. Group go out into desert...and stay there.

[ 12. May 2015, 09:43: Message edited by: fletcher christian ]

Posted by George Spigot (# 253) on :

Come to think of it why didn't God set up a covenant with any of our prehistoric "ancestors". Think of all the thousands of years wasted without any direct guidance.

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

quote:
Originally posted by George Spigot:
Come to think of it why didn't God set up a covenant with any of our prehistoric "ancestors". Think of all the thousands of years wasted without any direct guidance.

And you know he didn't, how? Lack of written records? From prehistoric times? And Genesis does not start with Abraham either, nor is his covenant the first to be mentioned...

Posted by MSHB (# 9228) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Anglo Catholic Relict:
It does not seem credible that one single nomad decided one day to change from pantheist to monotheist

...but it does seem credible that a single Egyptian king decided one day to change from polytheist to monotheist???

The story of Akhenaten seems just as sudden, unlikely, and isolated as Abraham's story, doesn't it?

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

quote:
Originally posted by MSHB:
The story of Akhenaten seems just as sudden, unlikely, and isolated as Abraham's story, doesn't it?

It is somewhat unclear to me in what sense Abraham is to be considered a "revolutionary monotheist". Devotion to a specific God does not necessarily entail the rejection of all other gods as false in a "philosophical" sense. Joshua 24:2 indicates that Abraham ended up believing in a different God than his father Terah. But his interaction with Melchizedek in Genesis 14:18-20 suggests that his personal interaction with the Lord was at least compatible with the faith of that "king of Salem". It seems likely that Abraham, upon moving from one place to another, ended up abandoning the god(s) dominant in his place of birth, and instead adopted the faith in a God dominant in the place where he settled. That as such is frankly "religious business as usual" and rather pragmatic, and I do not see in it the "founding of monotheism". That is not to doubt the election of Abraham by the God whom I consider to be the only true one. But I see no evidence that this coincided with Abraham somehow "inventing" monotheism as we now understand it.

As far as Akhenaten is concerned, I have to say that I find the invention of a "monotheist" religion by an absolute monarch entirely unsurprising. Religion certainly can and was used as a means of political control over the populace. And if one can impose the religion of a single god, while at the same time making oneself the very "chosen one" of that god, then one has brought an additional, highly significant means of power under one's control. Frankly, that this particular stunt wasn't tried more frequently is what we should really wonder about. That probably tells us something about the resilience of popular belief against change and/or about active power maintenance by the respective priesthoods.

Posted by leo (# 1458) on :

The God we see in Jesus chooses the weak and marginalised - so too with Israel rather thanm Egypt.

Posted by Honest Ron Bacardi (# 38) on :

IngoB's post remainds me that several years ago I decided to do a bit of low-level research on Melchisedek, and turned up a review of archaeological evidence which suggested that the whole area had a "tendency towards monotheism" then. Not that it was dominant but that it existed in various places and forms around that time.

Not having kept a note of the reference I can't say any more, but I pass it along as being of possible interest,

Posted by fletcher christian (# 13919) on :

It's possible to read Abraham as a metaphor, or at least in some sense embodying a society, culture and history of a group of people. For instance, it is possible to read the whole Abraham and Isaac episode as a societal, cultural and religious shift from human sacrifice to animal sacrifice which may have covered a period of a few hundred years. It's a reading that makes more sense to me; otherwise poor Isaac would have wet himself with fear every time Daddy said, 'Let's go for a walk son.'

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
There is an entire novel dedicated to that proposition, Pillar of Fire by Judith Tarr.

Precdeded by several decades by Moses and Monotheism, a work of rather speculative non-fiction by Sigmund Freud.

When I read that, years ago, I thought Freud's case was pretty convincing. But I've also read reviews, even by atheists who have nothing to lose by embracing the theory, that say it's pretty dodgy.

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

Judy (a friend of mine) is a reliable fictioneer, and the theology and speculation go down easier in novel form. Freud is tough sledding for some of us. There is actually a wikipedia entry for the novel, but the SoF setup refused to allow me to share the URL with you.

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
Judy (a friend of mine) is a reliable fictioneer, and the theology and speculation go down easier in novel form.

I enjoyed the Alf trilogy, and the first Avaryan trilogy, but I think few of her books have made it over here to the UK in the last twenty years.

Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
Judy (a friend of mine) is a reliable fictioneer, and the theology and speculation go down easier in novel form. Freud is tough sledding for some of us. There is actually a wikipedia entry for the novel, but the SoF setup refused to allow me to share the URL with you.

SoF doesn't like URLs with parentheses in them. Use TinyURL to get around this coding difficulty.

Posted by George Spigot (# 253) on :

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:

quote:
Originally posted by George Spigot:
Come to think of it why didn't God set up a covenant with any of our prehistoric "ancestors". Think of all the thousands of years wasted without any direct guidance.
And you know he didn't, how? Lack of written records? From prehistoric times? And Genesis does not start with Abraham either, nor is his covenant the first to be mentioned...

Fair enough. I just asumed it would have been an important enough event for God to have inspired it's recording.

Posted by GCabot (# 18074) on :

quote:
Originally posted by leo:
The God we see in Jesus chooses the weak and marginalised - so too with Israel rather thanm Egypt.

Although one cannot know why God chose Israel rather than Egypt to carry out his plan, one can speculate. Often those who are already powerful and prosperous tend to put their faith in themselves rather than in God. Perhaps the Egyptians would not have been as receptive to God's message as the Israelites were, (and given how many times the Israelities strayed from God's commandments, that puts it into some perspective). One can see modern analogues in the secular elite that have emerged over the past century, who see no need for God or faith anymore and believe they can rely solely on their own understanding. People often need to be humbled before they will accept God's sovereignty over their lives.

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

quote:
Originally posted by George Spigot:
Fair enough. I just asumed it would have been an important enough event for God to have inspired it's recording.

Adam and Eve? Cain and Abel? Seth et al.? Noah et al.? Whether by actual oral tradition / cultural memory passed on over many millennia, or as mythical story-telling gazing at the past, these stories seem to me like very good candidates for inspired narratives about the prehistoric past.

Posted by George Spigot (# 253) on :

So the theory is that Adam and Eve may not have been human? That's a fascinating idea.

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

quote:
Originally posted by George Spigot:
So the theory is that Adam and Eve may not have been human? That's a fascinating idea.

I'm not sure how you read that into what I wrote?! Adam and Eve represent the first humans in some sense. Whether that means they were the first homo sapiens sapiens to reach some unspecified cognitive threshold, or the the first home sapiens sapiens full stop, or possibly some earlier human form that in spite of our naming conventions can be considered sufficiently sapient, like homo ergaster, I do not know.

If you want to go into full on speculation mode, then you could assume that the Nephilim of Gen 6:4 were homo neanderthalensis and what you read there is an oblique reference to the meeting with homo sapiens sapiens including crossbreeding. Then the earlier story would indeed refer to the emergence of homo sapiens sapiens. Personally, I would favour a projection even deeper into time, to the first evidence of truly "intellectual" activity (and thus of the infusion of a "rational soul"). So perhaps homo ergaster, or even before that. But obviously all such speculation are flimsy "just so" stories, and more entertaining than of any real spiritual or intellectual value. I doubt that we will ever find evidence that could truly nail this down even for believers (who operate with extra constraints from taking Genesis "seriously" in some way), never mind for unbelievers.

Posted by George Spigot (# 253) on :

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:

quote:
Originally posted by George Spigot:
So the theory is that Adam and Eve may not have been human? That's a fascinating idea.
I'm not sure how you read that into what I wrote?!

Ah that's my fault. My post was muddled. When I wrote about prehistoric "ancestors" I was thinking of Neanderthals but mistakenly didn't make that clear.

Posted by JoannaP (# 4493) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
Judy (a friend of mine) is a reliable fictioneer, and the theology and speculation go down easier in novel form. Freud is tough sledding for some of us. There is actually a wikipedia entry for the novel, but the SoF setup refused to allow me to share the URL with you.

Can I ask how the novel deals with the fact that Rameses II did not die with the other first-born sons (or in the Red Sea)? That was the main weakness of Ahmed Osman's argument for me (until I read his next book which argued that Tutankhamen, Joshua and Jesus Christ were all one and the same man [Disappointed]

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

Sorry, I can't recall to that level of detail -- I read the novel some years ago.

Posted by Golden Key (# 1468) on :

quote:
Originally posted by fletcher christian:
It's possible to read Abraham as a metaphor, or at least in some sense embodying a society, culture and history of a group of people. For instance, it is possible to read the whole Abraham and Isaac episode as a societal, cultural and religious shift from human sacrifice to animal sacrifice which may have covered a period of a few hundred years. It's a reading that makes more sense to me; otherwise poor Isaac would have wet himself with fear every time Daddy said, 'Let's go for a walk son.'

...Or wait for a time when he could turn the tables, and psych his dad out...

Anyway, given your interpretation, you might like the novel "Ishmael", by Daniel Quinn.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

Madeleine L'Engle does a wonderful poem from Isaac's point of view that starts, "From now on, no fathers are to be trusted. I know."

Posted by Flubb (# 918) on :

The two main arguments about why Akhenaten went monotheist are religious and bureaucratic. He probably chose his own route as it avoids the trichotomy of the priestly centres Heliopolis, Memphis, and Hermopolis who all had their own theologies. Centralizing all this makes it easier for him to control.

He may have done it for bureaucratic reasons, as he probably wasn't known at court, and didn't know anyone at court, so it's easier to start fresh.

The problem with linking this to Moses is that virtually every element in Egyptian monotheism is opposite to Hebrew monotheism - Aten isn't a personal god, he's a god of light not of thunder/war, he's not a god of a group of people etc., which all points to a more pro-Canaanite origin of the Hebrew God.

Also Ahmed Osman is generally ignored by all mainstream academia.

Posted by Kelly Alves (# 2522) on :

quote:
Originally posted by fletcher christian:
It's possible to read Abraham as a metaphor, or at least in some sense embodying a society, culture and history of a group of people. For instance, it is possible to read the whole Abraham and Isaac episode as a societal, cultural and religious shift from human sacrifice to animal sacrifice which may have covered a period of a few hundred years. It's a reading that makes more sense to me; otherwise poor Isaac would have wet himself with fear every time Daddy said, 'Let's go for a walk son.'

I actually believe just that-- the story is a parable intended to remind folk that human sacrifice is forbidden.

Posted by Russ (# 120) on :

How many years / generations was the exile of the Israelites in Egypt supposed to have lasted ?

Surprising if they didn't come away with some ideas from Egyptian culture...

Best wishes,

Russ

Posted by itsarumdo (# 18174) on :

There is a recurring suggestion that all the mystery schools and esoteric traditions (including Cabalistic Judaism and Sufism) one way or another inherited a lot from the Egyptians.

Not to mention Greek science and philosophy.

Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
How many years / generations was the exile of the Israelites in Egypt supposed to have lasted?

Exodus claims the timespan was 430 years. In Genesis Abraham has a prophetic dream indicating an exile of 400 years. Of course, either or both of these numbers could be more numerologically significant than historically accurate.

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