The Ancient Tradition

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Music

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You’re listening to The Ancient Tradition. A Wonk Media Production. Music provided by Joseph McDade. He is your host, Dr. Jack Logan.

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Welcome to the ancient tradition. I’m Jack Logan. Welcome back to all of our long time listeners. I’m so glad to have you back. If you are a new listener, welcome, welcome. We’re glad to have you join us. I want to tell you a little bit about the podcast. On this podcast, we’re trying to reconstruct the original religious tradition that was given to human beings in deep antiquity. And we’re doing this based off of evidence.

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evidence that we can find in the world’s ancient texts and myths and symbols and rituals and architecture. And so far, it’s been pretty darn fruitful. It’s been quite a ride. The podcast is set up kind of like a college course where we start with the basics and then we build from there. So each episode builds off of the previous episode. So if you’re interested in this subject, I highly recommend after you listen to today’s episode.

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that you begin with episode number one and then you work your way through. You’ll get a much greater understanding of the theology and it’s a quite mind blowing theology at that. So it’ll be worth your time. With that, let’s jump into today’s episode. In our last episode, we began an examination of the first time known among the ancient Egyptians as Zeptepe.

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Among the Mesopotamians is Delume, the Hindu is the Krita Yuga, and among the ancient Egyptians is Paradise or the Garden of Eden, and there’s others that we can find as well. The ancients had quite a bit to say about what took place and the importance of what took place during that time, during the first time, so much so that we haven’t even scratched the surface yet. It’s really important that we take our time here and flesh out what took.

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place during the first time because as you’re going to see in the next couple of episodes the ancients placed great importance on this time period. So much so that everything that they did after this temple building, kingship rites, marital rites, festivals and the performance of religious rituals and their full theology was tied directly back to this time. Before we can properly understand what took place in the Garden of Eden

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the Golden Age, the Every When or the First Time. We’ve got to pause for an episode or two and talk about who God is, who the ancients tell us God is. Because as you’re going to see in this episode, who God is makes all the theological difference in the world. We must begin with the ancients description of the nature of God, or we’re not going to grasp the full theological significance of what they’re going to tell us took place in the first time.

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For centuries, the nature of God, particularly the material nature of God, has been a topic of intense debate. It’s engaged thinkers like Plato and prominent early Christian theologians and philosophers like Augustine and Tertullian, as well as some influential Jewish rabbis like Maimonides. This debate has spanned the Renaissance and the Enlightenment and it rages on today. And all you got to do is jump onto YouTube.

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or crack open the latest edition of the Harvard Theological Review to see that the debate over the material nature of God has not been resolved. This debate matters. It really, really matters because it has vast implications for who God really is. If we come down on the wrong side of this debate, we’re going to end up with an entirely incorrect understanding of who God is.

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an entirely incorrect understanding of the theology tied to God, and an entirely incorrect understanding of ourselves and our relationship to God. So it’s absolutely critical that we get this aspect of the nature of God correct from the very start. The central issue in this debate is whether the true nature of God is corporeal or incorporeal. So what does that mean?

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The English word corporeal comes from the Latin word corpus, which means body, as well as the Latin word corporeus, which means physical body. So the English word corporeal means a physical or material body. Merriam-Webster dictionary defines corporeal as, quote, having, consisting of, or relating to a physical material body. So this debates over which of the two.

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corporeal or incorporeal is the true nature of God. Does God have a physical material body or does he not? Now you might be wondering to yourself does it really matter if God has a material body or not? Yes, it absolutely matters. In fact it’s hugely consequential, which you’re gonna see in today’s episode. Basically

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argue that God is materially embodied, that he has a human-like form with eyes and ears and toes and lips and hair and a face. Those who argue that God is incorporeal argue that God does not have a material body, that God is not made of physical substance. They argue that God is invisible, which makes God unseeable, omnipresent, which makes God everywhere,

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and bodiless, which means God has no form or shape. The 12th century Sephardic rabbi and philosopher, Mammonides argued that God was incorporeal, that he could not be bound by any limitation. In Mammonides’ 13 Principles of Faith, he writes, quote, we believe that this oneness is neither a body nor a bodily force.

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Nor is he subject to any bodily characteristics, movement, rest or dwelling. Above there is no sitting, standing, division or cohesions. You cannot conceive of him of having any form. As you’re going to see in just a minute, the ancients are going to have a whole whole lot to say in regards to Maimonides position here. And you should also keep in mind that Maimonides wrote this towards the end of the 12th century AD.

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some 4,000 years after the ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians, not to mention the later Canaanites, Hittites, and Hebrews. The corporeality or incorporeality of God can be kind of a touchy subject. It can be polarizing. A lot of people have very strong opinions on which of these two positions constitutes the correct true nature of God. But these two views are antithetical. The true nature of God can only be one or the other.

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Either God has a physical material body or he doesn’t. Either God is invisible, omnipresent or bodiless or he’s not. Only one of these views can be the truth about the true nature of God. Since the premise of this podcast rests on the declaration given by the ancients themselves that God imparted a pure religious tradition in the beginning, we would assume

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And as you’re going to see in a minute, this really isn’t an assumption that God would have had to have given the ancients a correct understanding of who he was, of his true nature. So today we’re going to turn to the ancients and let the ancients speak for themselves. Let them teach us who God is. And how are we going to do this? Well, as usual, we’re going to do this by taking a dive into the world’s oldest texts.

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And we’re gonna start with the ancient Egyptian pyramid texts. The first text that I wanna talk about is pyramid text 422. It’s found in the pyramid of King Pepe I, who was the third king of the sixth dynasty, dated to 2289 to 2255 BC. In this passage, the deceased King Pepe ascends to heaven and he finds a door there. And this is what the text says, quote,

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The sky’s door is opened to you. The cool water’s door is made to pull open to you. So the deceased King Pepe arrives at the door of heaven and the door opens for him. Now listen to what he finds on the other side of the door. Quote, and you find the son standing waiting for you. The deceased King Pepe arrives at the door of heaven and he opens the door.

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and who’s standing there? The sun, S-U-N. The sun here is the high god, Ray. Note that the text tells us that the sun was, quote, standing there, waiting for King Pepe. Ray is a god who has the ability to stand. The ancient Egyptians used the sun to symbolize the glorious light that radiated from Ray’s being. You can learn more about the glorious light that emanates from God.

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He who upholds Maat in episode number 29, who is God, a glorious being of ineffable light. Now listen to what the glorious God Ray does next. Quote, you find the sun standing waiting for you. He takes hold of your arm, leads you into the sky’s dual shrines. In this passage, the high God Ray takes hold of King Pepe’s arm.

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and he leads him into the sky’s dual shrine. The shrine here refers to a temple. So we’re talking about a heavenly temple. So take note that the ancient Egyptians are teaching us that there is a temple in heaven. So in this passage, the high God takes King Pepe’s arm. Now listen to what happens next. Quote, he takes hold of your arm, leads you into the sky’s dual shrines and puts you on

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Osiris’ throne. Oh did you catch that? The radiant glorious high god, Re, takes King Pepe by the arm. He leads him into the heavenly temple and he puts him on a throne. I hope you catch what’s going on here. The high god just made King Pepe, who had previously been a human being on the earth, a heavenly king.

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The same thing that Christ promised to those who overcome in Revelation chapter 3 verse 21. That’s what’s happening in this passage. I could say a lot about this, but I’m using this text, Pyramid Text 422 today, to illustrate that the ancient Egyptians description of God here is clearly a description of a corporeal God. The high God Ray stands, takes King Pepe by the arm, leads him into the inner sanctum of the heavenly temple.

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and puts him on a throne. Ray is not an invisible, bodyless, omnipresent God. He’s visible. King Pepe can see him when the door of heaven opens. He’s not bodyless. He takes King Pepe by the arm and he leads him to a throne. And he’s not omnipresent. He dwells in a particular location in the cosmos, which we’ve learned in this program, is in the very heart.

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the very center, the very bosom of the cosmos, which we see expressed in symbols like the circum-punct and in shrines like Stonehenge. And we just learned in this passage that in the sacred center of the heavens, there’s a heavenly temple. And it’s precisely in that temple that God dwells. He dwells in a specific place. I know that the notion that God is omnipresent is widely believed, but

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The ancients never taught this. Merriam-Webster dictionary tells us that omnipresent means to be present in all places at all times. This would mean that God would be everywhere all the time. And again, the ancients never taught this. And this can be easily illustrated by what the ancients tell us about the primordial waters. As we’ve discussed on the program, the ancients are pretty darn clear that God is not present in the primordial waters. He is not…

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present in that place. The primordial waters are the antithesis of who God is. God is order. The primordial waters where the awful dragon, the father of chaos, along with all of the awful monsters who follow him dwell, is disorder. It’s hell there precisely because God is not present in that place. God cannot be considered omnipresent if there are

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which the ancients clearly tell us there are. If God does choose to appear above the Primordial Waters, like we’ve seen in so many of the myths, it’s because he’s there to impose order on the chaos, to create a new cosmic kingdom, a new universe or a new world. The creator essentially kicks the dragon out and he creates a realm of order where he can dwell. But as you’re gonna see as the podcast continues, the Primordial Waters are never fully eliminated.

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Primordial waters surround every cosmic kingdom. I really like how Egyptologist R.T. Rundle explains it on page 35 of Myth and Symbol in Ancient Egypt. He describes there God’s cosmic kingdom as an air bubble. And this is what he writes, he says, quote, “‘The basic principle of Egyptian cosmology is the primeval waters. It’s common in all the accounts of the origin of the universe.

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Every creation myth assumes that before the beginning of things, the primordial abyss of waters was everywhere, stretching endlessly in all directions. It was not like a sea for that has a surface. Whereas the original waters extended above as well as below all was dark and formless. The present cosmos, talking about ours, is a vast cavity, rather like an air bubble,

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the limitless expanse. Hence, the waters are still to be met everywhere at the limits of the known. The universe is the abode of light, surrounded by infinite thick darkness, a bubble of clarity and order, enveloped by the eternal night of the primordial ocean. Before creation, darkness was upon the face of the deep.

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and the present world, the dominion of the sun god, Ray is only a partial rolling back of the eternal night or the waters of chaos. In essence, Rundle’s telling us that we can envision God’s cosmic kingdom, kind of like an air bubble that’s been released from a scuba divers tank. Life preserving oxygen is encapsulated in the bubble, but the bubble is completely surrounded by water.

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Likewise, God’s life-producing cosmic kingdom, his kingdom, is completely surrounded by the primordial waters of chaos. This analogy is a pretty darn good one and we’re going to come back to it in a couple of months when we talk about the wall that surrounds God’s cosmic kingdom. And it’s worth looking forward to. And keep in mind that there could be an infinite number.

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of these cosmic kingdom air bubbles are universes throughout the cosmos, which was argued in episode number 27, universes beyond universes. The point of this discussion is to illustrate that God is not omnipresent. He is not everywhere. There are large swaths of the cosmos where He is not present. I’d like to emphasize that if God is embodied,

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and resides in a temple in the heart of his cosmic kingdom. That doesn’t necessarily have to conflict with the idea that his presence could still be felt throughout his entire kingdom. In fact, that is what the ancient Egyptians imply when they use the sun to symbolize the high god ray. His radiant glory, like the rays of the sun, permeate everything in his kingdom, everything in the air bubble. And like we discussed in episode number 29,

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who is God, a glorious being of ineffable light. God’s light seems to have the ability to transmit his immeasurable love to all of the creations within his kingdom, regardless of where he resides in body. Okay, let’s return to Pyramid Text 422 and read what else it says. Remember, the High God Ray has just made the deceased King Pepe a heavenly king. The text reads,

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quote, you take up your position Pepe on thighs forwards throne saved provided as a god and equipped with Osiris’s form on foremost of Westerners throne. Here the deceased King Pepe is told that he is now a god which signifies that he has been transformed into a divine being just like we saw

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when Enoch was made a heavenly king and Azanath was made a heavenly queen. And that he is now, quote, equipped with Osiris’s form. Osiris’s form here refers to Osiris’s resurrected body. If you remember in episode number 23, the troubling death of Osiris, Osiris was murdered by the awful dragon Set. Set cut Osiris’s body into 14 pieces and scattered them across Egypt.

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found Osiris’s body parts and with the assistance of the god Thoth, who is the lord of sacred ceremonials and Anubis, the god of embalming and funerary rites, unite and mummify Osiris’s body. In Donald McKenzie’s summary of this account, we’re told on page 23 and 24 of Egyptian myth and legend that Isis, Osiris’s wife, after having wrapped his body in linen

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and anointed it with myrrh, quote, hovered over the body and the air from her wings entered the nostrils of Osiris so that he was imbued with life once again. I think it’s pretty intriguing in this account that it’s Isis, Osiris’ wife, who breaks the seal of death.

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and imbues her husband’s body with life once again. She’s the one who gives new life to Osiris. That is pretty fascinating. We can’t overstate the significance of Osiris’ resurrection. In ancient Egypt, Osiris was the prototype. All embalming and mummification and funerary rites in ancient Egypt were patterned after the embalming, mummification, and funerary rites that were used by Thoth,

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to restore Osiris to life. These rites speak to the enormous significance of the physical body in ancient Egypt. Renowned Egyptologist Wallace Budge on page 198 of his seminal book, Egyptian Religion Rites, quote, “‘The Egyptians believed that mortal man “‘could be raised from the dead “‘and attain unto life everlasting.’

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The resurrection was the object with which every prayer was said and every ceremony performed in every text and every amulet and every formula of each and every period was intended to enable the mortal to put on immortality and to live eternally in a transformed glorified body. According to Budge there, every single rite and ceremony the ancient Egyptians performed

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was done with the specific aim of the resurrection of the physical body in mind. I don’t know that there’s ever been any society in the history of the world which has placed greater emphasis on the importance of the physical body and the reconstitution of that physical body than the ancient Egyptians. The extensive effort the ancient Egyptians made to preserve and to protect the physical body during life and after death

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virtually no question that they expected the actual physical body to rise again. That is the story of Osiris. And what did Osiris go on to do after he was resurrected? He went on to rule as the heavenly king of the Duat, the world of the dead, where he reigns as a god with a scepter in his hand on a heavenly throne in a deified, immortal, physical body.

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which we learned earlier in Pyramid Text 422 was to be the deceased King Pepe’s fate too when the text said, quote, take up your position Pepe on thighs forwards thrown, provided as a God and equipped with Osiris’s form. And if this weren’t clear enough, the text continues, quote, your son, and that’s speaking of the deceased King Pepe.

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takes up his position on your throne, equipped with your form, equipped with a deified immortal physical body just like Osiris, and does what you used to do before at the fore of the living. He’s talking about reigning as a king by command of the Son who is Rey, the great God.

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which indicates that in the heavens, there is a royal celestial hierarchy. So he’s telling us that the deceased King Pepe has the right to reign as a heavenly king because he was given authority to do so by the son, S-U-N, the high God Ray, whom we read earlier in this text, met him at the door of heaven and took him by the arm and led him into the heavenly temple. And note in this text that there is more than one God.

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there’s Ray, Osiris, and now Pepe. And note that each of these gods reigns as a heavenly king. They have thrones. And note that each of these gods is a deified human being with an immortal glorified physical body. And also take note that these gods reign from a particular place in the cosmos, on a throne from within a heavenly temple. Now,

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If you’re still not convinced, Pyramid Text 422 keeps going, stating it again, making it super, super clear. The text continues, quote, “‘Ho, Pepe, what pertains to you is given to you by the Son, S-U-N, who is Ray.'” He’s talking about a cosmic kingdom here. “‘You claim your body, having received a God’s form.’ Ho, Pepe.”

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Take up your position on your throne. The ancient Egyptians attest that God is a glorious corporeal being, a being of flesh and bone with real eyes and real ears and legs and arms and feet and hair. But his body isn’t exactly like ours because as we’ve already learned on this program, as a Lord of Ma’at or a King of Tzedek, his body is not subject to physical entropy.

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His physical body is perfectly ordered. No sickness, no disease, no bald spots, no wrinkles, no corruption of any kind. His body is perfect and thereby immortal. And because of his adherence to Ma’at, it radiates a glorious ineffable light, which is why the pyramid texts now refer to the deceased King Pepe as an quote imperishable. So one who never dies, star.

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a glorious, radiant being. This is who the ancient Egyptians tell us God is. The entire ancient Egyptian religion attests that God is a caporial being. This is made crystal clear in Pyramid Text 215, which is found in the Pyramid of King Unus. In this pyramid text, King Unus is told that every single aspect of his physical body

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like the other gods, gods whom the text identified by name, who reside in the heavens, and that his body now radiates like an imperishable star. Pyramid Text 215 reads, You, and he’s speaking to King Unas here, are distinguished in your identity of a god. You become completed as every god, your head as Horus of the Duat, an imperishable star, your face as eyes forward.

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imperishable star. Your ears, Atum’s twins, an imperishable star. Your nose as the jackal, an imperishable star. Your teeth, Saptu, an imperishable star. Your arms, Happy and Duatmatef, those are sons of Horus. Your legs,

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Atum’s twins, an imperishable star, you do not perish. That text couldn’t be clearer. This text affirms that God has a glorified physical body with a nose and teeth, ears, arms, and legs. In a text about the afterlife titled Amduat, dated to 1426 BC, the deceased states in section one, which is called the first hour,

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it represents the first gate of the underworld. The following and this is the Jakov Rabanovich translation quote I have come here that’s to the first gate of the underworld to achieve the mystery of my being to restore the breath of life to mine own dead body so it rises and lives and moves pretty straightforward

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The deceased goes to the first gate of the underworld with the specific objective of gaining a complete restoration of his dead physical body so that he might live and move in the afterlife. Egyptologist Eric Kornung, he’s the expert on that particular text, but he’s also the expert on the detailed meaning of the word image in ancient Egyptian texts. And he tells us on page 138 of his book, Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt.

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that in ancient Egypt, human beings were believed to be the image of God, to look like or to resemble God, in particular the high God Ray. According to ancient Egyptians, Hornung writes, human beings are images of God. In the scholarly world, the belief that one is made in the image of God is referred to as theomorphism. Theo or Theos is the Greek word for God.

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and morph is the Greek word for form. So a theomorphic human being is a human being with a body that resembles God’s body. If you’re a long time listener to the program, you’ve probably heard me use the word anthropomorphic when talking about God. This is a somewhat similar idea. Anthropos is the Greek word for human and morph again is the Greek word for form. So anthropomorphic means one,

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who has the physical form of a human body. Even though I use the word anthropomorphic to describe God, and I’m probably gonna continue to do that, it’s important to note that this description conveys a somewhat incorrect notion of God. And why is that? Well, because anthropomorphic states that God is patterned after human beings, whereas theomorphic states that human beings are patterned after God.

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There are a lot of secularists out there who argue that we humans just created a God after our own image. But that is absolutely not what the ancients taught. The ancients taught that we human beings are created in the image of God. The ancients taught that we are theomorphic, not that God is anthropomorphic. And that’s a very, very important distinction to make. Okay, so why do we humans have bodies like God?

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Well, for the answer to that, we need to dive back into the ancient Egyptian texts and see what they tell us. To do that, let’s turn to page 138 of Egyptologist Eric Hornong’s book, where he summarizes what’s written in a couple of important ancient texts. Hornong writes, quote, Human beings are images of God. Rare but unambiguous references show that this is true of all human beings.

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In the stories of Papyrus Westcar, that’s a text that’s dated to 1650 BC, even a criminal condemned to death is one of the quote, sacred herd of God. In the instruction for Maricare, and that’s a text dated to 2060 BC, mankind is said to be, now listen to this, quote, his likeness, who came from his flesh.

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Wow, that certainly is unambiguous. Here the ancient Egyptians tell us that we human beings look like God because we are literally the offspring of God. They tell us that we are literally the children of his flesh. So naturally we would look like him. The theology here is astounding. In the West Car Papyrus that Hornung references,

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Human beings are referred to as the sacred herd of God. And in the instruction for Marikari, mankind is referred to as the herd of God. Line 284 of the instruction of Marikari reads, quote, well-tended is mankind the cattle of God. To understand what is meant by cattle here, I need to give you a little more background.

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On one of the oldest and most significant artifacts that we have from ancient Egypt is an artifact known as the Narmar palette. On this palette is a depiction of the first King of Egypt standing over his enemies with a mace in his hand. If you’d like to see a picture of the Narmar palette, I’ve uploaded it to the web page for this episode. For the purposes of today’s episode though, it’s what King Narmar, who’s also known as King Menes, is wearing that interests us here.

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See, King Narmer from his waist is wearing the tail of a bull. And why is he wearing this? Well, because the high God Re’atum was associated with a bull. In fact, there are several pyramid texts that refer to the Sun, Sun, which is a symbol of Re’a’s glorious nature as quote, the Bull of Heaven. King Narmer is wearing the tail of a bull.

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to signify that he’s the rightful heir of Re, the bull of heaven. See, the ancient Egyptians used animals like the bull, the falcon, the hare, and the ram, and several other animals as a way to emphasize very important characteristics about that particular God. And for Re-Atoom, they chose the bull. And why did they choose the bull to symbolize Re, the supreme God? Well, they chose it precisely because of bulls

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massive muscular frame and formidable horns convey incredible power. And the second reason that they use the bull to symbolize Atum is because bulls are associated with incredible virility. The ability to produce offspring. To give you a real-world example of this according to Scientific American

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99% of the 9 million Holstein dairy cows in the United States, and those are those black and white cows that we commonly think of, can trace their DNA to just two bulls, both of whom were born in the 1960s. That’s an astonishing number of offspring from just two bulls. So when the Egyptian texts refer to human beings as the cattle of God or the sacred herd of God,

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This is a direct reference to God as the literal father of the human race. The text instruction for Merakari actually says this, speaking of human beings, quote, his images are they the products of his flesh. The notion that Reatum is the father of the human race is further substantiated in the royal titularity of the Egyptian king.

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When the reigning king took the throne, he was given five new names. And one of these names was known as the Nomen. This was the king’s personal name and it was always preceded by the title, son, S-O-N of Ra. Ra here is the same as re or atum. So if we were talking about King Pepe, his Nomen would be son of Ra, Pepe Neferkari. By using the appellation, son of re,

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King Pepe, the earthly king, is declaring that he is the son of the high god, Re, the son of his flesh. He is a son of God. And this concept of sonship is incredibly important in the ancient tradition. And we’re going to discuss it much, much, much more in depth down the line. In pyramid texts 214 and 215, which are found in the pyramid of King Unus, Re-atum is called the father.

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of the king. The text I’m going to read refers to the deceased King Unus. In the text, climbing refers to climbing to heaven. The text reads, climb to the place where your father is and he will give you what is on Horus’s brow. Now we already know in this program that what’s on Horus’s brow refers to the anointing oil. So this is another example of the anointing of a heavenly king. Ho Unus

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Your envoys have gone, your heralds have run to your father, to Atum. Pretty clear references there to Reatum as King Unus’s father. And what is the first thing King Unus wants to do when he gets to heaven? Well, if you hadn’t seen your father in a lifetime, what would be the first thing that you would want to do when you saw him?

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If you said, give him a hug, then you’d be right in line with King Eunice’s greatest desire. In Pyramid Text 215, King Eunice makes this heartfelt appeal. Quote, Atum, bring me up to you. Encircle me inside your arms. Could you even imagine the warmth and the love of that embrace? There would be no words.

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such an embrace it should go without saying would not be possible unless both the father and the son had physical bodies. One cannot hug or embrace an invisible, bodiless, omnipresent God. It’s not possible. Hugging is a physical act. To hug one has to be made of matter, exist in a particular

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being able to embrace God. Somehow an invisible body-less God seems remarkably distant and disconnected. Note how the ancient Egyptians attest that not only does God have a physical body, but it’s precisely by way of that physical body that he has a relationship, a very, very personal relationship with every single human being on the planet. According to the ancient

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The entire human race is bound to God in a familial bond precisely because, as it says in the instruction for Mary Carey, that we are the products of His flesh, that we are His children. We are the sacred cattle of God. God’s physical body then, not only binds the human race to God, but it also binds human beings to each other as brothers and sisters.

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in a grand familial relationship where everyone on the planet is an important member of God’s sacred herd. In this light, God’s physical body is the powerful force that binds all of us together. An invisible bodyless omnipresent God, precisely because he doesn’t have a physical body, would be completely incapable.

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of binding human beings to him in the way that a physical body binds a father to a son or a daughter. Here on planet earth, our most enduring relationships are directly tied to our physical bodies. It’s by way of our physical bodies that we are aunts and uncles and sisters and brothers and fathers and mothers and grandmas and grandpas. On planet earth, the physical body is the quintessential binding force.

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that keeps the entire human race from spiraling into oblivion, precisely because our familial bonds, day in and day out, keep us bound to each other and to something greater than ourselves. It’s pretty difficult to imagine how one could develop an intimate personal relationship with an invisible, bodyless, omnipresent entity. Before we move away from Egypt, I wanna emphasize one crucial point.

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See, the ancient Egyptians didn’t just attest that God had a glorified, immortal physical body and then move on to other things. No, the corporeal nature of God was an absolutely essential component of their entire religious framework, from funerary rites like mummification to kingship rites, where the king was proclaimed a son of God. Richard H. Wilkinson,

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referred to several times on the program, writes, quote, in the pyramid texts, we find the combined Ray Atum called the father of the king. And according to the legend preserved in the Westcar papyrus, the kings of the fifth dynasty were actual sons of Ray, divinely begotten. Already by the fifth dynasty, the son of Ray epitaph of the king’s titularity had been introduced, which formalized the relationship

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for the rest of Egyptian history. In this passage, it’s pretty clear that the entire ancient Egyptian society and religion rested on and attested to the corporeal nature of God. If we turn to the Judeo-Christian tradition and examine the texts that describe God, we find that the ancient Hebrews and the early Christians describe him in almost identical terms

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as did the ancient Egyptians, as a glorified corporeal being with a face and eyes and ears and lips and hands and feet. And when they describe the resplendent, glorious nature of the different aspects of God’s body, the descriptions are nothing short of breathtaking. In fact, in nearly all the Judeo-Christian accounts that we have, those who see God immediately fall to the ground awestruck.

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in fear and trembling due to his overwhelming majesty. So let’s start by taking a look at the descriptions of God found in the Bible. Pay special attention to how these texts describe God as having a physical glorified body. Let’s start with Moses. Let’s start with Moses’ description and then we’ll make our way towards the New Testament. Let’s start in Exodus chapter 33 verses eight, nine and 11.

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In this passage, Moses pitches the tabernacle, which is a portable temple in the Sinai, and he goes there to seek God. This is what the text says. And it came to pass, when Moses went out unto the tabernacle, that all the people rose up and stood every man at his tent door, and looked after Moses, until he was gone into the tabernacle. And it came to pass as Moses entered into the tabernacle.

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descended and stood at the door of the tabernacle. This is pretty fascinating to me because this sounds a lot like pyramid text 422 that we just read where King Pepe ascends to heaven and approaches the door of heaven and when he enters he finds the high God Rey standing there waiting for him. Here Moses goes to the tabernacle which we haven’t discussed on the program yet is

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the temple in heaven and what happens? In the moment that he enters the door of the tabernacle, a cloudy pillar descends and stands at the door of the tabernacle. Now listen to what the text says happens next. Verse nine reads, quote, and the Lord talked with Moses. Some people get caught up here on the cloudy pillar. They argue that this is evidence that God is in Caporio.

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But respectfully, I think they may have glazed over a few things. First, remember the Israelite people were watching this from their tents. And as we learned in episode number four, the Israelite people were not worthy to see God because of their idolatry. It’s my contention that God shrouded his glory in a cloudy pillar to shield the Israelites because they were neither worthy nor prepared to witness the full magnitude of his glory.

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Second, the fact that Moses and the Israelite people could see with their very own eyes the cloudy pillar descend indicates that at least some aspect of God is visible. Moses and the Israelites could clearly see it. This is not an invisible God. He may be a hidden God, but he is not an invisible God. There’s a difference. Third,

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not only was the cloudy pillar visible, it occupied a particular location, the door of the tabernacle. This is not an omnipresent God. This is a God that moves from location to location. In this case, the text is absolutely clear that God moved from the heavens down to the door of the tabernacle, something that he absolutely would not have had to have done if he were omnipresent.

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And fourth, the text clearly states that, quote, the Lord talked with Moses. Now, if you’re wondering whether or not God really talked to Moses like you and I would talk to one another, then we have to take a look at Numbers chapter 12, because God himself has something to say about this. In verses six to eight, God is explaining that Moses is his prophet, and then this is what God himself says in verse eight.

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with him, he’s speaking of Moses, shall I speak mouth to mouth? It’s right there in the Bible, right there. God himself attests that he has a mouth. This isn’t somebody else saying God has a mouth. This is God himself testifying that he has a mouth. All right, let’s jump back to Exodus chapter 33 and keep reading.

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Remember, Moses and God are talking with each other at the door of the tabernacle. And then this is what verse 11 says happens next. Quote, and the Lord spake unto Moses face to face as a man speaketh unto his friend. You would have to exercise a lot of mental gymnastics to turn what it says right there in the Bible into an invisible, bodyless,

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omnipresent God. The text clearly states that God spoke to Moses face to face. A bodiless God does not have a face. The God Moses talked to did. And what’s more, the text tells us that Moses and God talked together just like we would talk to one of our closest friends. Exodus chapter 33 and Numbers chapter 12 both attest that God has a mouth

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and a face and speaks. He is a corporeal being. In Daniel chapter 10 verses five and six, Daniel sees the Lord and this is how he describes what he saw. And this comes from the King James Version, quote, “‘Then I lifted up mine eyes and looked “‘and behold a certain man clothed in linen “‘whose loins were girded with fine gold of upahs.’

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Here, Daniel tells us that when he saw God, he saw a man, and that God was dressed in clothes. He was wearing linen, and what I surmise was a golden apron around his waist. The God Daniel witnessed clearly had a body. Daniel even uses the word body itself in the next verse, in verse six. The verse reads, quote, “‘His body also was like the barrel.'” Now, barrel’s a precious stone.

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and his face was the appearance of lightning, and his eyes as lamps of fire, and his arms and his feet like in color to polished brass, and the voice of his words like the voice of a multitude. Here Daniel attests that God has a body, face, eyes, ears, and feet. And you can just tell that Daniel is searching for ways to help us grasp the sheer magnitude of his glorified body.

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His face is like lightning, his eyes are like fire, his arms and feet are like polished brass, his body is like barrel. There are no Hebrew words to truly describe God’s glorified body, so Daniel has to use symbols. Let’s take a look now at Ezekiel’s account. In Ezekiel chapter one, Ezekiel describes what he saw as follows. Verse 26 reads, quote,

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and above the firmament that was over their heads was the likeness of a throne as the appearance of a sapphire stone. And upon the likeness of the throne was the likeness as the appearance of a man above upon it.” Here we’re getting the same description of God that we saw in ancient Egypt and in Exodus and in Daniel. Here Ezekiel sees God, who’s a man seated on a sapphire throne. The God Ezekiel witnesses is clearly visible

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has a body and is seated on a throne in a specific location in the heavens. Ezekiel’s witness is the antithesis of an invisible, bodyless, omnipresent God. Let’s read the rest of Ezekiel’s description where he attempts to describe God’s glory. Verse 27 reads,

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from the appearance of his loins even upward and from the appearance of his loins even downward. I saw as it were the appearance of fire and it had brightness round about. Ezekiel describes God’s glorified body as the color of amber, the appearance of fire and brightness round about. I also wanna point out that this verse attests that God has loins.

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loins are reproductive organs. In other words, this passage attests that God has a glorified body in every sense of the word. Now listen to what Ezekiel did after he witnessed God’s glory. Verse 28 reads, quote, this was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of God. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord.

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when I saw it I fell upon my face. I think I would too. Moses, Daniel, and Ezekiel all give us very consistent descriptions of God that attest that he is a glorified corporeal being. Now let’s take a look at a couple of descriptions of God in early Christianity starting with Revelation chapter 1. In verses 12 to 17

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John the Revelator describes what God looks like, and this is what he says. Verse one reads, quote, “‘In the midst of the seven candlesticks, “‘one likened to the Son of Man, “‘clothed with a garment down to the foot, “‘and gird about the paps with a golden girdle.'” John’s description of God here, albeit 650 years after Daniel, sounds very similar to Daniel’s. Here, John describes the resurrected Christ as a man.

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The man clothed down to the foot, wearing a golden sash or girdle over his garment. John then attempts like Daniel and Ezekiel to put words to God’s glory. The text continues. His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were as a flame of fire, and his feet like into fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace, and his voice as the sound of many waters.

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His countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength. Here, John attests that the resurrected Christ has a body, a body with hair and eyes and feet. Here, John attests that the resurrected Christ’s glory is so incomprehensible that his hair is as wide as snow, his eyes are like fire and his feet are like brass.

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And like the rest of the ancient world, John attests that his countenance shown like the sun in its strength. It’s quite difficult after reading these descriptions to reconcile how many Christians have interpreted this to mean that God is invisible, bodyless and omnipresent. It doesn’t make sense to me.

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Moses’s, Daniel’s, Ezekiel’s, and John’s descriptions of God clearly attest that God has a glorified body. If I had more time, I’d read Enoch’s description of God in the book of the holy secrets of Enoch in chapter 22 and Azenith’s description of God in chapter 14 of the book of Joseph and Azenith. Since we’ve already read those descriptions on the program, I’ll just point out that both Enoch and Azenith’s descriptions of God attest that God has a glorified body.

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If you’re interested in listening to a full audio recording of the book of the Holy Secrets of Enoch or the book of Joseph and Azaneth, you can find them on our sister podcast, The Ancient Tradition Audio-Rit. Before I close out this episode, I want to point out that the notion of a resurrected Christ itself attests that God has a glorified body. What need would Christ have for a resurrected body

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if in the heavens he were an invisible, bodiless, omnipresent being. There would be no need. Yet the New Testament is replete with attestations that Christ rose from the dead in the same physical body that he walked the earth, albeit in an immortal glorified form. In the New Testament in John chapter 20, Peter and John the beloved

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Receive word from Mary Magdalene that the stone guarding the entrance to the sepulcher where Christ had been laid had been removed. Peter and John race to the sepulcher and this is what they see. Verses five and seven read, quote, and he this speaks of John the beloved stooping down and looking in saw the linen clothes lying, the napkin that was about his head not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself.

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Peter and John find that the napkin has been neatly folded and placed near the linens but not on them. Something that a grave robber would never have done. I personally love the thought of the Christian Jesus upon his resurrection neatly folding his burial clothing. It speaks volumes about the careful, considerate nature of his character. For the purposes of this episode though, it’s the fact that

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that the physical body with which Christ walked the earth is the body that’s missing. This indicates that Christ’s resurrected body wasn’t just reassembled from the dust of the earth. Instead, it was the actual body that he used when he lived on the earth. This is the same theology taught by the ancient Egyptians and the precise reason the ancient Egyptians went to great lengths to preserve the physical body after death.

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After this, Peter and John leave and Mary Magdalene stays near the empty sepulcher. It’s at this point that Mary sees Jesus. Verse 14 reads, she turned herself back and saw Jesus standing and knew not that it was Jesus. Note that Mary sees with her mortal eyes the resurrected Christ. He’s standing in fully resurrected bodily form before

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She doesn’t recognize that it’s him. Then Jesus asks her why she’s weeping, and it’s not until he calls her by name that she realizes it’s him, her risen Lord. Mary Magdalene was a close intimate of Christ. In that moment, what do you think Mary wanted to do? Well, the text doesn’t tell us, but we infer from the text when Christ says, touch me not, that she wanted to touch him. My guess, like King Eunice,

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in Pyramid text 215, who wanted to embrace Ray at the door of heaven, is that she wanted to embrace Christ, to wrap her arms around her risen Lord. In Luke chapter 24, the risen Christ appears before his disciples with a resurrected body of flesh and bone. Starting in verse 36, the text reads, And as they thus spake, this is the disciples,

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Jesus himself stood in the midst of them and saith unto them, Peace be unto you. But they were terrified and frightened and supposed that they had seen a spirit. And he said unto them, Why are you troubled? And why do thoughts arise in your hearts? The disciples are clearly frightened by Jesus’s appearance. Now listen to what Jesus does next and pay special attention to the anthropomorphic

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Jesus says to them, behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself, handle me and see, for a spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see me have. And when he had thus spoken, he shewed them his hands and his feet. I don’t know how a Christian scripture on the corporeal nature of God could get more authoritative than this.

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Here Christ himself is declaring in no parsed words that he is a caporial God, a resurrected God of flesh and bone. The disciples must have been skeptical because he invites them to come and handle his flesh for themselves. The Luke account tells us that even after inviting them to do this, the disciples quote, yet believed not and wondered.

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So what did Christ do to really drive home the point that yes, He was in fact truly a resurrected God of flesh and bone? Well, let’s read the text and find out. Starting in verse 41, the text reads, and while they yet believed not for joy and wondered, He said unto them, have ye hear any meat? So what does He do? Well, what He does is quite astonishing.

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He asks them for something to eat. See, a spirit cannot eat. Only a being of flesh and bone can eat. Like so many in the world today, the disciples wanted to believe that he was a spirit and not a corporeal being. But right then, Christ put that notion to rest and asked for something to eat.

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so that he could undeniably demonstrate to them that he was not a spirit, but a God with a real body of flesh and bone. So let’s keep reading and see what the disciples brought him to eat. The text reads, and they gave him a piece of broiled fish and of an honeycomb, and he took it and did eat it before them. So what did he eat to demonstrate his corporeal nature?

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fish and a honeycomb. The God of heaven ate fish and a honeycomb. I know of no invisible, bodiless, omnipresent God that can do this. Right after this, Christ tells his disciples in verse 48, quote, ye are witnesses of these things. Having seen him eat, they could now go out and testify to others that the God of heaven did in fact have a glorious body of flesh and bone.

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An invisible, bodiless God is completely incompatible with Christianity. To believe otherwise would be to reject the words of Christ Himself and the witnesses of the early apostles who held His body and watched Him eat. As you can see in this episode, there is sound textual evidence that the ancient Egyptians,

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And the early Christians taught the same thing that God has a glorified body of flesh and bones. One that can eat fish and honeycomb and one who thankfully has the ability to wrap his arms around us and hug us tight.

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That’s it for me. We’ll pick up here in our next episode. Until then, I’ll leave you with the words of William Shakespeare. Knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven. I’m Jack Lowe.

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You’ve been listening to the Ancient Tradition. A Wonk Media Production.