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Egyptian Origin of the Book of Revelation


Djedi

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Way back in 2005 on the Egyptian Dreams forum where kmt_sesh used to be moderator I posted the following:

From NT; Revelation, chapter 4, verse 5-11
"And 7 fiery torches burn in front of the throne; these are the 7 spirits of God. And in front of the throne was a sea of glass, like cristal. And arround the throne were 4 animals, covered with eyes, front and back...And the 4 animals had each 6 wings; covered with eyes...the 24 elders fall on their knees in front of Him, who is seated upon the throne, to praise Him."


From: Wallis Budge, The gods of the Egyptians, volume I, page 180.
(Description of the second department of the Duat)
"On the right are 24 human-forms, which represent those who praised Ra upon earth, and who directed their words against the arch-fiend Apep. In the centre is the boat of the sun, in which the god stands in his shrine; he is ram-headed, and holds in his hand a sceptre. The shrine is protected by the serpent Mehen, and a serpent stands upright on its tail before him; the boat is being towed along by 4 beings of the Duat, and is met by the 7 gods called Nepmeh, Nenha, Ba, Horus, Ua-ab, Khnemu, and Setchet, and by 6 gods of the aquet, and a god with a staff."

Back in 2005 I looked for literature about this subject but unfortunatly, no one has ever done an in depth study about those similarities although Gerald Massey and Wallis Budge had already mentioned similarities between certain aspects of the Judeo-Christian tradition and AE religion. But no follow up by modern day bible scholars or egyptologists... 

Recently I came accros this http://www.revorigin.com/

For those interested in the book, the first 137 pages can be found here:

https://books.google.ca/books?id=6LDGY-QJlfEC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Egyptian+origin+of+the+book+of+revelation&hl=en&sa=X&ei=qyc5T-htyKCDB_rd5ecF#v=onepage&q=Egyptian origin of the book of revelation&f=false

John H.C. Pippy already published this book back in 2011, so I was surprised I never came accross this work before. The reason for this could be that the author isn't a professional bible scholar or egyptologist and that academics aren't even aware of his publication. I must admit that if I hadn't noticed the similarities mentioned above and I would have come accross this book in a bookstore I probably would have dismissed it as another fringe publication.

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Could just be coincidence. Some ancient cultures all thought certain numbers were important, and with specific situations. 

However, I could also see that there is influences of one onto the other possibly. I'm a practicing Christian, but I recognize that some "truths" of Christianity have been borrowed from older cultures.

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Well, John of Patmos was literate and a citizen of the Roman Empire who was stuck on a Greek Island so he would of most likely encountered Egyptian concepts. The Greeks borrowed the concepts and wrote about them.

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Yeah certain numbers were held in high regard by many cultures and the early AD Roman Empire was a glorious patchwork of many, many small and large religions and cults all cross-pollinating each other. 

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On 2/19/2018 at 5:28 AM, Djedi said:

Way back in 2005 on the Egyptian Dreams forum where kmt_sesh used to be moderator I posted the following:

From NT; Revelation, chapter 4, verse 5-11
"And 7 fiery torches burn in front of the throne; these are the 7 spirits of God. And in front of the throne was a sea of glass, like cristal. And arround the throne were 4 animals, covered with eyes, front and back...And the 4 animals had each 6 wings; covered with eyes...the 24 elders fall on their knees in front of Him, who is seated upon the throne, to praise Him."


From: Wallis Budge, The gods of the Egyptians, volume I, page 180.
(Description of the second department of the Duat)
"On the right are 24 human-forms, which represent those who praised Ra upon earth, and who directed their words against the arch-fiend Apep. In the centre is the boat of the sun, in which the god stands in his shrine; he is ram-headed, and holds in his hand a sceptre. The shrine is protected by the serpent Mehen, and a serpent stands upright on its tail before him; the boat is being towed along by 4 beings of the Duat, and is met by the 7 gods called Nepmeh, Nenha, Ba, Horus, Ua-ab, Khnemu, and Setchet, and by 6 gods of the aquet, and a god with a staff."

Back in 2005 I looked for literature about this subject but unfortunatly, no one has ever done an in depth study about those similarities although Gerald Massey and Wallis Budge had already mentioned similarities between certain aspects of the Judeo-Christian tradition and AE religion. But no follow up by modern day bible scholars or egyptologists... 

Recently I came accros this http://www.revorigin.com/

For those interested in the book, the first 137 pages can be found here:

https://books.google.ca/books?id=6LDGY-QJlfEC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Egyptian+origin+of+the+book+of+revelation&hl=en&sa=X&ei=qyc5T-htyKCDB_rd5ecF#v=onepage&q=Egyptian origin of the book of revelation&f=false

John H.C. Pippy already published this book back in 2011, so I was surprised I never came accross this work before. The reason for this could be that the author isn't a professional bible scholar or egyptologist and that academics aren't even aware of his publication. I must admit that if I hadn't noticed the similarities mentioned above and I would have come accross this book in a bookstore I probably would have dismissed it as another fringe publication.

Not even vaguely plausible.  And the book is an example of truly abominable scholarship; of taking an idea and force-hacking other things to fit its box.  The attempt to equate Set with the Egyptian symbol for the number '6' is an example of just how dreadful the scholarship is.  The symbol for the number 'six' was first used AFTER 500 AD (400 years after Revelation was written)

(and what he's done to the Book of Gates would cause Kmt_Sesh to grit his teeth and tear out his hair (the author's hair.  Not Kmt_Sesh's hair.))

As to the idea that it was borrowed from the Book of the Dead

  • By the time Revelation was written, very few people could read hieroglyphs (only Egyptian priests really could read them.) 
  • There are NO non-hieroglyph versions of these books.
  • By 35 BC, the hieroglyph versions were mostly unreadable to everyone.... the books were rather hastily copied with inconsistent texts.
  • Once these books were inscribed for the deceased, they would be hastily buried.  They were not kept in libraries
  • Each of these 'books' is a collection of verses and there is no one single book that is copied and recopied.
  • 'Lake of fire' as actually occurs in the Old Testament.  It's not a new concept.  Ditto the other things in Revelation

It's not discussed by scholars because there are so many errors of this same type on almost every page.  One can spend one's academic life picking apart every instance of foul scholarship or one can instead promote the good and write new research.  This book is so bad that no Biblical or Egyptian scholar is going to devote much time to it.

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11 hours ago, Kenemet said:

Not even vaguely plausible.  And the book is an example of truly abominable scholarship; of taking an idea and force-hacking other things to fit its box.  The attempt to equate Set with the Egyptian symbol for the number '6' is an example of just how dreadful the scholarship is.  The symbol for the number 'six' was first used AFTER 500 AD (400 years after Revelation was written)

(and what he's done to the Book of Gates would cause Kmt_Sesh to grit his teeth and tear out his hair (the author's hair.  Not Kmt_Sesh's hair.))

As to the idea that it was borrowed from the Book of the Dead

  • By the time Revelation was written, very few people could read hieroglyphs (only Egyptian priests really could read them.) 
  • There are NO non-hieroglyph versions of these books.
  • By 35 BC, the hieroglyph versions were mostly unreadable to everyone.... the books were rather hastily copied with inconsistent texts.
  • Once these books were inscribed for the deceased, they would be hastily buried.  They were not kept in libraries
  • Each of these 'books' is a collection of verses and there is no one single book that is copied and recopied.
  • 'Lake of fire' as actually occurs in the Old Testament.  It's not a new concept.  Ditto the other things in Revelation

It's not discussed by scholars because there are so many errors of this same type on almost every page.  One can spend one's academic life picking apart every instance of foul scholarship or one can instead promote the good and write new research.  This book is so bad that no Biblical or Egyptian scholar is going to devote much time to it.

Yes, better the author's hair but not my own. I don't have enough left.

I doubt there

s much connection between pharaonic Egypt and Revelations. By the time that book of the New Testament was being written, Egypt was already highy Romanized and well on its way to Christianity. One cannot argue that some fo the earliest forms of Christianity transpired in Egypt, but I don't see much concordance between the symbolism of Revelations and ancient Egypt. Revelations is more about the "beast" known as Rome.

I am not familiar with the book in question, nor do I recall that Egyptian Dreams discussion.

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11 hours ago, kmt_sesh said:

Yes, better the author's hair but not my own. I don't have enough left.

I doubt there

s much connection between pharaonic Egypt and Revelations. By the time that book of the New Testament was being written, Egypt was already highy Romanized and well on its way to Christianity. One cannot argue that some fo the earliest forms of Christianity transpired in Egypt, but I don't see much concordance between the symbolism of Revelations and ancient Egypt. Revelations is more about the "beast" known as Rome.

I am not familiar with the book in question, nor do I recall that Egyptian Dreams discussion.

I'm actually quite familiar with the Bible and with some Greco-Roman symbolism.  It was written for a Greco-Roman audience and drew on material that they were culturally familiar with.  There's a lot of papers on this topic.

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On 23/2/2018 at 7:28 AM, DieChecker said:

Could just be coincidence. Some ancient cultures all thought certain numbers were important, and with specific situations. 

However, I could also see that there is influences of one onto the other possibly. I'm a practicing Christian, but I recognize that some "truths" of Christianity have been borrowed from older cultures.

 

On 23/2/2018 at 0:28 PM, Piney said:

Well, John of Patmos was literate and a citizen of the Roman Empire who was stuck on a Greek Island so he would of most likely encountered Egyptian concepts. The Greeks borrowed the concepts and wrote about them.

 

On 23/2/2018 at 2:11 PM, Orphalesion said:

Yeah certain numbers were held in high regard by many cultures and the early AD Roman Empire was a glorious patchwork of many, many small and large religions and cults all cross-pollinating each other. 

A lot of "Mystery Cults" in the Roman Empire were contemporary with Early Christianity, including that of Isis and Osiris, but also many others.

For those interested; some online articles about the (possible) influence of the Mystery Cults on Christianity

http://jesuspuzzle.humanists.net/supp13A.htm

The focus of is almost always on The Gospel when comparisons with Mystery Cults are made. The Book of Revelation is almost never considered.

I'm not saying l agree with the author of "Egyptian Origin of the Book of Revelation", that the Book of Revelation is based in it's entirety on AE texts, but the similarities between Revelation, chapter 4, verse 5-11 and the second department of the Duat are to blatant IMHO to be just coincidence. There's definitely some influence here and maybe more than just in the example from chapter 4, verse 5-11. A collaboration between a Bible Scholar and an Egyptologist specialized in AE religion might shed some light on this.

Edited by Djedi
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