"It is most important that this point should be properly understood and appreciated. In one of the few cases where a concept that figures in the New Testament has been taken to be ultimately of Egyptian origin, Jesus' parable of Dives and Lazarus, [rich man and Lazarus: Luke 16] it has quite correctly been assumed that this transmission took place by way of Jewish material. How complex the process may be within the Egyptian tradition itself, and how large a part was played by Greek elements (Stoic diatribes), emerged some years ago from an analysis of the association between ship and tongue in the Epistle of St James [James 3:4] , which was originally Egyptian.", The way in which Egyptian influence made itself felt is fairly clear in those cases where it first affected images in the Old Testament (including the Apocrypha) which were later taken over by New Testament writers. This seems to me to be the case with two passages in the Epistle to the Romans: the proverbial 'coals of fire' which were to be heaped upon one's enemy [Romans 12:20] - derived from a Late Egyptian penitential rite and, much more significantly, the Apostle's words on the absolute power of the Creator to confer honour and dishonour [2 Timothy 2:20], so making a quite arbitrary distinction between his creatures; here St Paul is giving universal currency to a formula that we first hear of with Amenemope. Finally, the path taken by Egyptian influence can also be followed where the Christian form can be traced back first to an Egypto--Hellenistic one, and this in turn traced back to Egypt itself. This is the case with the acclamation ETS 6E65 ('God is One'), used by the earliest Christian communities: this is derived from one employed in the service of Sarapis ('One is Zeus-Sarapis'), and this in turn comes from the early Egyptian theologians' form COne is Amon', etc.)., In most cases, however, intermediary stages cannot as yet be identified. Attempts to establish the lines of transmission must be based upon the fundamental principle which we have formulated above: namely, that Egyptian religion passed on its forms to the Hellenistic world and so enlarged the range of expression available to the latter. In our view this influence makes itself felt, for example, in the much-cited 'second death' in the Revelation [chapter 20:14] of St John, which may owe something to the widely disseminated Egyptian concept of a second mortality-"' It is also present in the notion of a 'crown of life' [James 1:12], or in those of righteousness and glory; in elucidating these concepts one must draw not only upon Greek material but also upon the 'crown of righteousness' [2 Timothy 4:8] to which there were so many references during the last centuries of Egyptian paganism. Egypt's significance for early Christian theology These few examples must suffice. The remainder of this chapter will be devoted to a cursory examination of Egypt's significance for early Christian theology. When considering Egyptian religious thought we learned of the phenomenon whereby three gods were combined to form one. Various motives led to the evolution of this concept, which allowed for many shades of interpretation between the two poles of monism and triadism; as we have seen, the trinity was a major preoccupation of Egyptian theologians. -The evidence quoted above extended down to the Late period; here we may add that we also find such evidence in Greek only one generation before the beginnings of Christian theological speculation on such matters. An amulet dating from the period around A.D. 100, now in the British Museum, bears a distich which forms the accompanying text to a rendering, on the reverse side, of three Egyptian deities: a falcon-headed Bait, a frog-headed Hathor and a winged serpent by the name of Akori. It runs, in prose translation: 'One is Bait, one is Hathor, one is Akori - to these belongs one power. Be greeted, father of the world, be greeted, God in three forms. This distich contains the acclamation just mentioned, which goes back at least to the Amon theology of the Ramesside period; the one God (father of the cosmos) has as his attributes (to use the Egyptian terminology) three #prw or Nw, 'forms' or 'appearances'; thus three gods are combined and treated as a single being, addressed in the singular. In this way the spiritual force of Egyptian religion shows a direct link with Christian theology. In order to avoid any gross misunderstanding, we must at once emphasize that the substance of the Christian Trinity is of course Biblical: Father, Son and Holy Ghost. The three are mentioned alongside one another in the New Testament, probably for liturgical reasons. But one essential point is still lacking for the Trinity in the proper sense: the concept or notion of such a combination. Indeed, there is no sign as yet of an awareness of the problem of three-in-one, or of the complex theological prerequisites for this awareness, i.e. the attitudes of mind inculcated by a certain type of education and the existence of appropriate trends of thought. This compels the scholar to look outward to neighbouring lands: not directly to Egypt, but to the whole surrounding area. If such a search is undertaken, it will yield a negative result for all territories except Egypt. Mesopotamian theologians, who faced the same problems as their opposite numbers in Egypt, because they had to reconcile local gods with national deities and cosmic beings, apparently did not arrive at trinitarian formulae. Nor is any such evidence forthcoming from Syria, even after the amount of original literature increases considerably. On the contrary, the Syrian goddesses Kadesh, Astarte and Anath apparently only coalesce into a triune deity on Egyptian soil (see p. 143) One would not expect such a development to occur in Israel, with its consistent henotheism. Characteristically, the Yahvist tale of the three divine beings who called on Abraham at the sacred tree of Mamre does not lead to any effort to resolve the theological problem raised by the presence of three persons; instead the narrator simply omits the two who are superfluous. It is a thinkerftom Alexandria, Philo, who interprets the text in terms of the Trinity and thereby opens up a fruitful line of argument for Christian exegetes. His comment runs: 'To those who are able to distinguish [Moses] represents it as something absolutely natural that one can be three and three can be one, because according to the higher reasoning they are one.' Finally, on Greek soil in the sixth century theology becomes completely sterilized by the emergence, out of the religious domain, of philosophy. Prior to that, it is true, Hesiod classified the gods genealogically, but nowhere did he discuss problems of religious thought such as those known to Egypt. Thus only Egypt remains. Philo's remarkable exegesis points to this, and this may be taken as a hint that we are on the right road. Further encouragement may be drawn from the succession of great Christian thinkers (and their Gnostic forerunners) who originated from Egypt or lived there, starting with Valentine and Basilides(C. A.D. 135), followed by Clement and Origen, and leading to Alexander, Athanasius and the presbyter Arius. Only two data may be singled out here, which testify to the emergence in Christian Egypt of the problems we are interested in. Basilides seems to have been the first to use the concept, which was later to attain such importance. According to the Egyptian Gospel Jesus is supposed to have said to his disciples that 'the same was the Father, the same was the Son and the same the Holy Ghost'. Without abandoning our principle that Egyptian influence made itself felt as an undercurrent throughout Hellenism, we may nevertheless claim pride of place for Alexandria and so consider Alexandrian theology as the intermediary between the Egyptian religious heritage and Christianity. The Trinity is not the only subject- matter at issue here. Also Christology, which is closely linked to it - the doctrine concerning the nature of Christ and especially his pre-existence before the creation and time - revolves around questions which had been posed earlier by Egyptian theologians and which they solved in a strikingly similar way. These questions are discussed in the doctrines concerning Shu, the son of the Heliopolitan primary god Atum, which the Coffin Texts have preserved for us; here the deceased is equated with the son of God: 'I am Shu whom Atum has made the day when he [himself] came into being.' The idea is expressed still more clearly in an address by Atum: 'When I was alone with the [primordial ocean] Nun [and when the creation] did not yet exist, Shu [and his sister Tefnut] were with Me." In this particular case, admittedly, the path of contact with Christian theology has not yet been explored. But in view of what we have been able to show in regard to the Trinity, this ought to be regarded as a stimulus to further research, not as a stumbling-block. The multifarious links between Egypt and Judaeo-Christian scriptures and trinitarian theology can already be traced with some degree of plausibility. The same is true of many other matters that we have been unable to consider here, such as the relationship between the Isis cult and Mariolatry, or between the exclusiveness of Late Egyptian temples and the monasticism that sprang up in the Nile valley. All this entitles us to the opinion that Egypt played its part in the efforts of Christians to achieve an understanding of God and his works, which are eternal. (Egyptian Religion, Siegfried Morenz, p254-257)

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Written By Steve Rudd, Used by permission at: www.bible.ca