The Egyptian Origin of Christianity

Perhaps with the publication of this book it can finally be regarded as fact that Egypt's influence on modern theology is most strongly perceived through Christian beliefs and practices.

I will primarily be focusing here on the direct ceremonial parallels between the modern Roman Catholic Church and ancient Egyptian ceremony. In both systems, there is a great pride in tradition and the detailed specificity with which rituals are carried out. While all forms of Christianity display strong parallels to the rituals of ancient Egypt, perhaps the strongest examples can be seen in Roman Catholicism.

It might be said that it is impossible to compare ancient Egyptian practice with a religion which occurred much later and which on the surface appears to be entirely different. However, the case may be made that, like a staircase, each evolutionary step builds upon the one before it. Literary and historical evidence of the route can be directly traced to ancient Egypt.

Generally around 2250 B.C.E. invaders came through the English Channel "from Libya, by way of Spain, Southern and Northern France, or by way of Spain, Portugal and Brittany..."

At different periods in the second millennium B.C.E., a confederacy of mercantile tribes, called in Egypt 'the people of the sea,' were displaced from the Aegean area by invaders from the northeast and southeast; that some of these wandered north, along already established trade routes, and eventually reached Britain and Ireland; and that others wandered west, also along established trade routes, some elements reaching Ireland by way of West Africa and Spain. Still others invaded Syria and Canaan, among them the Philistines, who captured the shrine of Hebron in southern Judea from the Edomite clan of Caleb, but the Calebites, ...allies of the Israelite tribe of Judah, recovered it about two hundred years later and took over a great part of the Philistine religion at the same time."

Ancient travelers were widely dispersed from North Africa, where all evolutionary theorists agree that human life began, carrying with them their traditions and customs. Therefore, religious hermeneutics can only be properly achieved through acknowledgment of the source material. The incantations from The Book of the Dead, for example, began circa three thousand B.C.E., much earlier than any Biblical works; yet The Bible is seen as the seat of all morality.

However, the importance of the Egyptian sway can no longer be denied. It has prompted great thinkers like Siegfried Morenz, Director of the University of Liepzig Institute of Egyptology, to remark that "the influence of the Egyptian religion on posterity is mainly felt through Christianity and its antecedents. Egypt's contribution to the Old Testament is actually a product of that country's relationship with Syria; its contribution to the New Testament, indeed, even to early Christian theology, must be seen as a special instance of that general influence exerted by Egypt upon the Hellenistic world." It is that influence which will be explored herein in terms of modern day practices of particularly the Roman Catholic Church in order that the true nature of religion as a whole may be elucidated.