100 years or so after the Exodus, Pharaoh Akhenaten decided to make Egypt into a monotheistic state and destroy its idols. He destroyed the power of the priesthood and insisted that "Aten" was the true and sole creator deity which all Egyptians were to worship. The more I think about it, the more I wonder whether this was an attempt to get Egypt to repent and worship the true God. After Akhenaten's death, the country went right back to idolatry and paganism. Why? I suspect their lack of revelation (e.g., the Pentateuch) contributed to it, making Akhenaten the only authority on this monotheistic revolution. Couldn't last, especially since he ticked off the entirety of the pagan priesthood. But there's another element at play - everyone in Egypt would have known that this creator deity, "Aten" was the same deity that wiped out their armies and killed their firstborn a century prior. Telling them to submit to that same God was telling them their ancestors were *wrong,* and pride got in the way.

Akhenaten was horribly slandered by the succeeding dynasties (neither of Tutankhamen's children survived and he died at 19, ending the 18th dynasty) as "that criminal" or "the enemy", people would call him "heretic" "mad" and "possibly insane", his monuments destroyed. if He and Nefertiti's attempts were a legitimate attempt to bring Egypt to worship the one true God, and that the couple believed in the one true God, may God rest their souls.

Just ask this question to ChatGPT - be amazed. "What religion focuses more on ceremony, dogma, tradition than the actual God or Gods?"

You...you trust in ChatGPT for your religious beliefs? Well, I will stick with what my Bible says.

The only GPT to trust is God's Perfect Text

You know it

Intriguing idea. Is there anything to read on this idea?

I'll have to do a deep dive on it soon. Unfortunately it's difficult to find decent scholarship on it since there was a damnatio memoriae on Akhenaten and most "scholars" take a late-date position on the Exodus, rendering their conclusions about Akhenaten incomprehensible.

Its like your underdog kid lining up for the race, and you do not say "I trust you will redeem yourself". Which means you will put up a fight, you show what you made of, your courage inspire respect. You will say "I have Faith in you", and then you wait and see what your kid achieves, or fail to achieve. You know the outcome of the race will not change your Faith. Jesus did not write this down, he just planted the seed and it grew inside of me.

You rang?

The description you're giving me comes from something called Enthusiasm, and it's demonstrating a lack of understanding regarding how God utilizes means to achieve His goals. Here's something to get you started: https://www.modernreformation.org/resources/essays/martin-luther-on-the-holy-spirit-a-lesson-in-sticking-to-the-basics

Bullshit. The text is not "holy". If it inspires you, if it brings you to Jesus its like the Holy Car that brought you to the Holy Church. If it does not inspire you its just a text, just another ancient literature, just another book to burn. I read a few religious texts an all inspired me to one degree or the other. But none of them, including the "New Testament" brought me to Jesus. Today I read the New Testament to learn about the teachings of Jesus, and not the other way around, to bring me to Jesus.

Get a load of Karl Barth over here.

SuperLutheran Egyptologists do not seem to think Aten was an attempt to establish Yahweh or close approximation as Egypt's god, especially you don't see some categories attributed to Aten that are attributed to God in the Bible. For example, Aten was not fully transcendent above creation nor invisible to most of humanity, with the sun being thought of as Aten's body. I don't think there was also any explicit connection of Aten with events of the Torah and interactions with the Hebrews in extant hieroglyphics at the time or the Hymn of Aten, especially mentions of the Exodus itself. Israelites and other groups in Canaan did have a connection with Egyptians at this time, so neither Akhenaten nor rest of Egyptians did not have an excuse of simply "forgetting" the religion of the Hebrews. Akhentan seem more like a Muhammad or ancient Joseph Smith than an Egyptian Moses or mere misguided soul. What do you think of David Falk's assessment? https://www.egyptandthebible.com/index.php/2018/10/23/atenism-was-it-really-monotheistic/ There are a few scholars that try to claim the Hebrews were the ones borrowing from Atenism and not the other way around, but we ignore those goobers.

@Myles@poa.st @SuperLutheran@poa.st @Sulla_Felix@poa.st Rest in God's Peace

that is my initial impression of Atenism, while it is nice to think Akhenaten was doing something good, it is likely he started worshipping the sun after losing faith in the Idols.

the Druze consider Akhenaten to be a Prophet, if that is anything to consider.

His legacy lives on. To honor him, I'll find a way to connect him to the sin of the Watchers.

branman65 SuperLutheran The Egyptians already worshiped the sun through Ra, but Atenism was like a consolidation of all the gods except the divinity of the Pharaoh, which Akhenaten kept. We won't ultimately know, this side of Heaven, why Akhenaten reformed Egypt's cults because the ancient Egyptians had the propensity of destroying their own records and withholding embarrassing details in what they did keep, besides what other forces, natural and manmade, have done to oral traditions, historical records, monuments, and artifacts over the centuries. We are lucky to even still have a copy of the main info source on Atenism, the Great Hymn, as the fullest original hieroglyphics found in the Tomb of Ay in El Armana were partially vandalized after the 1903 discovery. If I can take am educated guess, Akhenaten used some concepts from that funny monotheistic religion of those perfidious Semitic sheep herders to consolidate all cultural powers away from Egypt's priestly institution and pour them entirely on himself, beyond the political power he already enjoyed as the presumably divine Pharaoh. We know that Nefertiti, after Akhenaten's death, acted as a tyrant while still perpetuating her deceased husband's religion, with her tyrannical actions then being associated with the dead on arrival cult.

so it was similar to how the main 5 hindu deities all collectively make up Brahman?