Another book published by one of those ignorant people honored with only a Doctorate and a few more degrees. Guess that makes him evil too hunh Shalom?
PERSONAL RELIGION
IN EGYPT
BEFORE CHRISTIANITY
BY W. M. FLINDERS PETRIE
D.C.L., LL.D., F.R.S., F.B.A.
AUTHOR OF
"THE REVOLUTIONS OF CIVLISATION"
"RELIGION AND CONSCIENCE"
"RELIGION OF ANCIENT EGYPT"
ETC.
1912
PREFACE
The Personal Religion here dealt with is that which concerns private beliefs, rather than public acts, and which stands apart from Ceremonialism, and Religion as belonging to the State. The documents considered have to be viewed entire, and therefore some collateral subjects naturally come within our scope, such as creation and the nature of divinity. But yet such were anciently matters of individual belief rather than of general dogma.
The material here worked over is all published already; but it had not yet received the historical study which it required to place it in its true connection. The new results which justify this restatement of the documents are: (1) the earlier dating of the Hermetic writings, which lie between 500 and 200 B.C., instead of being some centuries later as hitherto supposed. (2) The consequent tracing out of a gradual development of beliefs and terms which place the documents in their relative order of growth. (3) The historical precision of the life of Apollonios, as an evidence of its genuineness.
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Some hesitation may be felt in taking the differences between documents as evidences of different age. But first it should be noted that we do not trust to mere silence or omissions of terms, but that the active use of the same word--such as Logos--in different senses, is the criterion followed. Nor can it well be that such was due to different contemporary schools, as the Hermetic writings are closely connected by style, structure, and ideas. Nor can the differences be due to esoteric and exoteric writing for different degrees, as the divine sense of Logos would not be profaned by a false sense being taught to the lower grades of learners. We have to bridge the gap between Logos as the reason of all men and animals in early writing, and Logos as Divine in later works. To place the intermediate writings in the order of development of this, and of various other terms and ideas, is the only right course until some other modifying reason may be proved.
CONTENTS
PREFACE vii
Chapter I. OUR VIEW OF THE MIND 1
Chapter II. THE NATURE OF THE RELIGIOUS MIND 18
Chapter III. THE DATEABLE HERMETIC WRITINGS 38
Chapter IV. THE ASCETICS 59
Chapter V. THE UNDATED HERMETIC WRITINGS 85
Chapter VI. PLUTARCH'S ANALYSIS OF RELIGION 107
Chapter VII. APOLLONIOS, OR THE REVIVALIST 138
Chapter VIII. SUMMARY 166
INDEX 169
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PERSONAL RELIGION
IN EGYPT
BEFORE CHRISTIANITY
CHAPTER I
OUR VIEW OF THE MIND
The religious literature of the centuries immediately before the establishment of Christianity is a region of thought far too little known in general. The documents, though accessible to scholars, are not familiar to the ordinary reader like the other historical material of that time. This is partly due to their more recent discovery, partly to the difficulty of following their ideas and phraseology, partly to a feeling that they bear an unholy resemblance to the accepted scriptures and must be worthless imitations of such, and partly because the whole spirit of these documents is repellent to the modern idea of exact statement of ascertained facts. Each of these reasons is true of one or other of the religious works of that age, and the whole class has suffered a practical oblivion. Yet as the writers are clearly earlier than the
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apostolic age, their works are among those most needful for an understanding of the modes of thought of that time; further, in the wider view of the history of religion, no period is more worthy of study than that of the rise of spreading systems of thought, seen in Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Mithraism, Isiism, and Christianity. Even here the interest does not pause, for one of the most remarkable subjects is the mass of variations of Christianity, its interminable sects and heresies which resulted from the spread of a new gospel over all the existing schools of thought and belief, incorporating more or less of all that went before it. In so vast a subject, some kind of classified outline which can serve as key to the scope of it, is much wanted.
Before taking a general view, it is needful to understand what we are to look at, and how to distinguish the parts of the scene and their relation to each other. If we were to study the chemistry or the astronomy of ancient times in Egypt or elsewhere, it would be useless to begin without some scientific knowledge of the subject from a modern point of view. We must know the principal elements and their reactions before we could make any sense of ancient recipes on alchemy, we must understand the real motions of the planets before we can study ancient astronomy or astrology. Similarly it is needful to understand the nature of religious thought and its manifestations, and the
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principles of mental action, before we can rightly grasp or interpret the maze of theo-cosmosophical ideas and practices which embodied religious thought in the past. Without some preparation for such a subject the modern mind will either turn from it in disgust as tedious word-spinning, or blindly accept it as a beautiful mystery. Fortunately the serious work of analysis of the religious mind has been lately done, in a thorough but reverent and sympathetic manner, by Professor W. James in his Gifford Lectures on The Varieties of Religious Experience. In that we have a textbook of the subject by a trained psychologist, who can disentangle the confusion of motive and feeling, and deal with each mental condition with insight and analysis. Such a work needs careful study, and we propose in the next chapter to give a summary of its system as the basis for our review of the various religious writings that we are to consider. |
