ISBN: 0457e4decb30fea021c23ed70c3eb43e

IN writing this treatise my object has been to give a clear exposition of the most important shape which the doctrine of immortality assumed in Egypt. This particular form of the doctrine… Altro …

IN writing this treatise my object has been to give a clear exposition of the most important shape which the doctrine of immortality assumed in Egypt. This particular form of the doctrine was only one of many different ones that were held. The latter, however, were but occasional manifestations, whereas the system here treated of was the popular belief among all classes of the Egyptian people, from early to Coptic times. By far the greater part of the religious papyri and tomb texts and of the inscriptions of funerary stel? are devoted to it; the symbolism of nearly all the amulets is connected with it; it was bound up with the practice of mummifying the dead; and it centred in the person of Osiris, the most popular of all the gods of Egypt. Even in Pyramid times Osiris had already attained pre-eminence; he maintained this position throughout the whole duration of Egyptian national life, and even survived its fall. From the fourth century B.C. he, together with his companion deities, entered into the religious life of the Greeks; and homage was paid to him by imperial Rome. Throughout the length and breadth of the Roman Empire, even to the remotest provinces of the Danube and the Rhine, altars were raised to him, to his wife Isis, and to his son Harpocrates; and wherever his worship spread, it carried with it that doctrine of immortality which was associated with his name. This Osirian doctrine influenced the systems of Greek philosophers; it made itself felt in the teachings of the Gnostics; we find traces of it in the writings of Christian apologists and the older fathers of the Church, and through their agency it has affected the thoughts and opinions of our own time. Religion , AU,DE,ES,FR,GB,UK,IT,MX,US English Theology & Religion, Perlego<

2022, ISBN: 0457e4decb30fea021c23ed70c3eb43e

LITTLE as we know of the ancient Egyptian religion in its entirety, and of its motley mixture of childishly crude fetichism and deep philosophic thought, of superstition and true religiou… Altro …

LITTLE as we know of the ancient Egyptian religion in its entirety, and of its motley mixture of childishly crude fetichism and deep philosophic thought, of superstition and true religious worship, of polytheism, henotheism, and pantheism, one dogma stands out clearly from this confusion, one article of belief to which the Egyptian religion owes its unique position among all other religions of antiquity--the doctrine of the immortality of the human soul. It is true that other ancient religions attained to a similar dogma, for the belief was early developed among Semites, Indo-Germanians, Turanians, and Mongolians; but in all these cases it appears as the outcome of a higher conception of man and God and of their reciprocal relationship, and, when attained to, brought about the abandonment of grossly material forms of thought. But in Egypt we have the unique spectacle of one of the most elaborated forms of the doctrine of immortality side by side with the most elementary conception of higher beings ever formulated by any people. We do not know whether the belief in immortality which prevailed in the valley of the Nile is as old as the Egyptian religion in general, although at first sight it appears to be so. The oldest of the longer religious texts which have come down to us are found in the wall inscriptions of pyramids of kings of the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties (according to Manetho's scheme of the dynasties), and must be dated to at least 3000 B.C. In these texts the doctrine of immortality appears as a completed system with a long history of development behind it., 2022<

ISBN: 0457e4decb30fea021c23ed70c3eb43e

Religion , UK,GB,DE,ES,FR,IT,US,CA,MX,AU,NZ 20150504 English Theology & Religion, Perlego