Ikhnaton

95:5.1The teach­ings of Amen­emope were slowly los­ing their hold on the Egyp­tian mind when, through the in­flu­ence of an Egyp­tian Salemite physi­cian, a woman of the royal fam­ily es­poused the Mel­chiz­e­dek teach­ings. This woman pre­vailed upon her son, Ikh­na­ton, Pharaoh of Egypt, to ac­cept these doc­trines of One God.

95:5.2Since the dis­ap­pear­ance of Mel­chiz­e­dek in the flesh, no hu­man be­ing up to that time had pos­sessed such an amaz­ingly clear con­cept of the re­vealed re­li­gion of Salem as Ikh­na­ton. In some re­spects this young Egyp­tian king is one of the most re­mark­able per­sons in hu­man his­tory. Dur­ing this time of in­creas­ing spir­i­tual de­pres­sion in Mes­o­po­ta­mia, he kept alive the doc­trine of El Elyon, the One God, in Egypt, thus main­tain­ing the philo­sophic mono­the­is­tic chan­nel which was vi­tal to the re­li­gious back­ground of the then fu­ture be­stowal of Mi­chael. And it was in rec­og­ni­tion of this ex­ploit, among other rea­sons, that the child Je­sus was taken to Egypt, where some of the spir­i­tual suc­ces­sors of Ikh­na­ton saw him and to some ex­tent un­der­stood cer­tain phases of his di­vine mis­sion to Uran­tia.

95:5.3Moses, the great­est char­ac­ter be­tween Mel­chiz­e­dek and Je­sus, was the joint gift to the world of the He­brew race and the Egyp­tian royal fam­ily; and had Ikh­na­ton pos­sessed the ver­sa­til­ity and abil­ity of Moses, had he man­i­fested a po­lit­i­cal ge­nius to match his sur­pris­ing re­li­gious lead­er­ship, then would Egypt have be­come the great mono­the­is­tic na­tion of that age; and if this had hap­pened, it is barely pos­si­ble that Je­sus might have lived the greater por­tion of his mor­tal life in Egypt.

95:5.4Never in all his­tory did any king so me­thod­i­cally pro­ceed to swing a whole na­tion from poly­the­ism to mono­the­ism as did this ex­traor­di­nary Ikh­na­ton. With the most amaz­ing de­ter­mi­na­tion this young ruler broke with the past, changed his name, aban­doned his cap­i­tal, built an en­tirely new city, and cre­ated a new art and lit­er­a­ture for a whole peo­ple. But he went too fast; he built too much, more than could stand when he had gone. Again, he failed to pro­vide for the ma­te­rial sta­bil­ity and pros­per­ity of his peo­ple, all of which re­acted un­fa­vor­ably against his re­li­gious teach­ings when the sub­se­quent floods of ad­ver­sity and op­pres­sion swept over the Egyp­tians.

95:5.5Had this man of amaz­ingly clear vi­sion and ex­traor­di­nary sin­gle­ness of pur­pose had the po­lit­i­cal sagac­ity of Moses, he would have changed the whole his­tory of the evo­lu­tion of re­li­gion and the rev­e­la­tion of truth in the Oc­ci­den­tal world. Dur­ing his life­time he was able to curb the ac­tiv­i­ties of the priests, whom he gen­er­ally dis­cred­ited, but they main­tained their cults in se­cret and sprang into ac­tion as soon as the young king passed from power; and they were not slow to con­nect all of Egypt’s sub­se­quent trou­bles with the es­tab­lish­ment of mono­the­ism dur­ing his reign.

95:5.6Very wisely Ikh­na­ton sought to es­tab­lish mono­the­ism un­der the guise of the sun-god. This de­ci­sion to ap­proach the wor­ship of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther by ab­sorb­ing all gods into the wor­ship of the sun was due to the coun­sel of the Salemite physi­cian. Ikh­na­ton took the gen­er­al­ized doc­trines of the then ex­is­tent Aton faith re­gard­ing the fa­ther­hood and moth­er­hood of De­ity and cre­ated a re­li­gion which rec­og­nized an in­ti­mate wor­ship­ful re­la­tion be­tween man and God.

95:5.7Ikh­na­ton was wise enough to main­tain the out­ward wor­ship of Aton, the sun-god, while he led his as­so­ciates in the dis­guised wor­ship of the One God, cre­ator of Aton and su­preme Fa­ther of all. This young teacher-king was a pro­lific writer, be­ing au­thor of the ex­po­si­tion en­ti­tled “The One God,” a book of thirty-one chap­ters, which the priests, when re­turned to power, ut­terly de­stroyed. Ikh­na­ton also wrote one hun­dred and thirty-seven hymns, twelve of which are now pre­served in the Old Tes­ta­ment Book of Psalms, cred­ited to He­brew au­thor­ship.

95:5.8The su­preme word of Ikh­na­ton’s re­li­gion in daily life was “righ­teous­ness,” and he rapidly ex­panded the con­cept of right do­ing to em­brace in­ter­na­tional as well as na­tional ethics. This was a gen­er­a­tion of amaz­ing per­sonal piety and was char­ac­ter­ized by a gen­uine as­pi­ra­tion among the more in­tel­li­gent men and women to find God and to know him. In those days so­cial po­si­tion or wealth gave no Egyp­tian any ad­van­tage in the eyes of the law. The fam­ily life of Egypt did much to pre­serve and aug­ment moral cul­ture and was the in­spi­ra­tion of the later su­perb fam­ily life of the Jews in Pales­tine.

95:5.9The fa­tal weak­ness of Ikh­na­ton’s gospel was its great­est truth, the teach­ing that Aton was not only the cre­ator of Egypt but also of the “whole world, man and beasts, and all the for­eign lands, even Syria and Kush, be­sides this land of Egypt. He sets all in their place and pro­vides all with their needs.” These con­cepts of De­ity were high and ex­alted, but they were not na­tion­al­is­tic. Such sen­ti­ments of in­ter­na­tion­al­ity in re­li­gion failed to aug­ment the morale of the Egyp­tian army on the bat­tle­field, while they pro­vided ef­fec­tive weapons for the priests to use against the young king and his new re­li­gion. He had a De­ity con­cept far above that of the later He­brews, but it was too ad­vanced to serve the pur­poses of a na­tion builder.

95:5.10Though the mono­the­is­tic ideal suf­fered with the pass­ing of Ikh­na­ton, the idea of one God per­sisted in the minds of many groups. The son-in-law of Ikh­na­ton went along with the priests, back to the wor­ship of the old gods, chang­ing his name to Tu­tankhamen. The cap­i­tal re­turned to Thebes, and the priests waxed fat upon the land, even­tu­ally gain­ing pos­ses­sion of one sev­enth of all Egypt; and pres­ently one of this same or­der of priests made bold to seize the crown.

95:5.11But the priests could not fully over­come the mono­the­is­tic wave. In­creas­ingly they were com­pelled to com­bine and hy­phen­ate their gods; more and more the fam­ily of gods con­tracted. Ikh­na­ton had as­so­ci­ated the flam­ing disc of the heav­ens with the cre­ator God, and this idea con­tin­ued to flame up in the hearts of men, even of the priests, long af­ter the young re­former had passed on. Never did the con­cept of mono­the­ism die out of the hearts of men in Egypt and in the world. It per­sisted even to the ar­rival of the Cre­ator Son of that same di­vine Fa­ther, the one God whom Ikh­na­ton had so zeal­ously pro­claimed for the wor­ship of all Egypt.

95:5.12The weak­ness of Ikh­na­ton’s doc­trine lay in the fact that he pro­posed such an ad­vanced re­li­gion that only the ed­u­cated Egyp­tians could fully com­pre­hend his teach­ings. The rank and file of the ag­ri­cul­tural la­bor­ers never re­ally grasped his gospel and were, there­fore, ready to re­turn with the priests to the old-time wor­ship of Isis and her con­sort Osiris, who was sup­posed to have been mirac­u­lously res­ur­rected from a cruel death at the hands of Set, the god of dark­ness and evil.

95:5.13The teach­ing of im­mor­tal­ity for all men was too ad­vanced for the Egyp­tians. Only kings and the rich were prom­ised a res­ur­rec­tion; there­fore did they so care­fully em­balm and pre­serve their bod­ies in tombs against the day of judg­ment. But the democ­racy of sal­va­tion and res­ur­rec­tion as taught by Ikh­na­ton even­tu­ally pre­vailed, even to the ex­tent that the Egyp­tians later be­lieved in the sur­vival of dumb an­i­mals.

95:5.14Al­though the ef­fort of this Egyp­tian ruler to im­pose the wor­ship of one God upon his peo­ple ap­peared to fail, it should be re­corded that the reper­cus­sions of his work per­sisted for cen­turies both in Pales­tine and Greece, and that Egypt thus be­came the agent for trans­mit­ting the com­bined evo­lu­tion­ary cul­ture of the Nile and the rev­e­la­tory re­li­gion of the Eu­phrates to all of the sub­se­quent peo­ples of the Oc­ci­dent.

95:5.15The glory of this great era of moral de­vel­op­ment and spir­i­tual growth in the Nile val­ley was rapidly pass­ing at about the time the na­tional life of the He­brews was be­gin­ning, and con­se­quent upon their so­journ in Egypt these Bed­ou­ins car­ried away much of these teach­ings and per­pet­u­ated many of Ikh­na­ton’s doc­trines in their racial re­li­gion.

95:4.5In the Book of He­brew Proverbs, chap­ters fif­teen, sev­en­teen, twenty, and chap­ter twenty-two, verse sev­en­teen, to chap­ter twenty-four, verse twenty-two, are taken al­most ver­ba­tim from Amen­emope’s Book of Wis­dom. The first psalm of the He­brew Book of Psalms was writ­ten by Amen­emope and is the heart of the teach­ings of Ikh­na­ton.

123:0.3Through­out the two years of their so­journ at Alexan­dria, Je­sus en­joyed good health and con­tin­ued to grow nor­mally. Aside from a few friends and rel­a­tives no one was told about Je­sus’ be­ing a “child of prom­ise.” One of Joseph’s rel­a­tives re­vealed this to a few friends in Mem­phis, de­scen­dants of the dis­tant Ikh­na­ton, and they, with a small group of Alexan­drian be­liev­ers, as­sem­bled at the pala­tial home of Joseph’s rel­a­tive-bene­fac­tor a short time be­fore the re­turn to Pales­tine to wish the Naz­a­reth fam­ily well and to pay their re­spects to the child. On this oc­ca­sion the as­sem­bled friends pre­sented Je­sus with a com­plete copy of the Greek trans­la­tion of the He­brew scrip­tures. But this copy of the Jew­ish sa­cred writ­ings was not placed in Joseph’s hands un­til both he and Mary had fi­nally de­clined the in­vi­ta­tion of their Mem­phis and Alexan­drian friends to re­main in Egypt. These be­liev­ers in­sisted that the child of des­tiny would be able to ex­ert a far greater world in­flu­ence as a res­i­dent of Alexan­dria than of any des­ig­nated place in Pales­tine. These per­sua­sions de­layed their de­par­ture for Pales­tine for some time af­ter they re­ceived the news of Herod’s death.

96:1.53. El Shad­dai. It is dif­fi­cult to ex­plain what El Shad­dai stood for. This idea of God was a com­pos­ite de­rived from the teach­ings of Amen­emope’s Book of Wis­dom mod­i­fied by Ikh­na­ton’s doc­trine of Aton and fur­ther in­flu­enced by Mel­chiz­e­dek’s teach­ings em­bod­ied in the con­cept of El Elyon. But as the con­cept of El Shad­dai per­me­ated the He­brew mind, it be­came thor­oughly col­ored with the Yah­weh be­liefs of the desert.

95:1.11Much of the Mes­o­po­ta­mian re­li­gious cul­ture found its way into He­brew lit­er­a­ture and liturgy by way of Egypt through the work of Amen­emope and Ikh­na­ton. The Egyp­tians re­mark­ably pre­served the teach­ings of so­cial obli­ga­tion de­rived from the ear­lier And­ite Mes­o­po­ta­mi­ans and so largely lost by the later Baby­lo­ni­ans who oc­cu­pied the Eu­phrates val­ley.

92:5.113. The post-Mel­chiz­e­dek era. Though Amen­emope and Ikh­na­ton both taught in this pe­riod, the out­stand­ing re­li­gious ge­nius of the post-Mel­chiz­e­dek era was the leader of a group of Lev­an­tine Bed­ou­ins and the founder of the He­brew re­li­gion—Moses. Moses taught mono­the­ism. Said he: “Hear, O Is­rael, the Lord our God is one God.” “The Lord he is God. There is none be­side him.” He per­sis­tently sought to up­root the rem­nants of the ghost cult among his peo­ple, even pre­scrib­ing the death penalty for its prac­ti­tion­ers. The mono­the­ism of Moses was adul­ter­ated by his suc­ces­sors, but in later times they did re­turn to many of his teach­ings. The great­ness of Moses lies in his wis­dom and sagac­ity. Other men have had greater con­cepts of God, but no one man was ever so suc­cess­ful in in­duc­ing large num­bers of peo­ple to adopt such ad­vanced be­liefs.

95:3.5Egypt was in­tel­lec­tual and moral but not overly spir­i­tual. In six thou­sand years only four great proph­ets arose among the Egyp­tians. Amen­emope they fol­lowed for a sea­son; Okhban they mur­dered; Ikh­na­ton they ac­cepted but half­heart­edly for one short gen­er­a­tion; Moses they re­jected. Again was it po­lit­i­cal rather than re­li­gious cir­cum­stances that made it easy for Abra­ham and, later on, for Joseph to ex­ert great in­flu­ence through­out Egypt in be­half of the Salem teach­ings of one God. But when the Salem mis­sion­ar­ies first en­tered Egypt, they en­coun­tered this highly eth­i­cal cul­ture of evo­lu­tion blended with the mod­i­fied moral stan­dards of Mes­o­po­ta­mian im­mi­grants. These early Nile val­ley teach­ers were the first to pro­claim con­science as the man­date of God, the voice of De­ity.