The archtype sungod in Christianity comes from the Ankh which all those Abrahamic religions come from the Amarna cult...and their persecution by the Egyptian Orthodox Religious Class.

It's been speculated that the Pharaoh Akhenaten got his ideas a notions from his great-grandmother, a Mittanean Aryan, and that the Amarna Cult rose at roughly the same time as the Vedas were being composed.

Akhenaten's Naharin ancestors have been misunderstood much, and Revilo P. Oliver thought they were non-white, which is only true if the Aryan Battle-Ax folk were non-white. Unlikely in that age.

Akhenaten's religious symbol was actually a sun-disk with rays shooting downward and
nding with little hands that said "have life", literally. The ankh was a glyph in their language which just meant "life". When Pharaoh was shown holding an ankh he was only granting someone a favor in some way or another and it was usually not religious.

Historian Donald Redford (http://www.personal.psu.edu/users/d/b/dbr3/director.html) has studied the Amarna religion extensively and concludes there is no possible connection between Akhenaten and the much later Israelites, except as a highly-garbled piece of mangled history the Israelites got from the Philistine city-states.

This sounds about right. The Israelites were swiping stories from everyone and cobbing their fictional "exodus" together and there is some real Bronze Age history in it. It's just all fictionalized and overblown.

Akhenaten is principally famous for his religious reforms, where the polytheism of Egypt was to be supplanted by monotheism centered around Aten, the god of the solar disc. This was possibly a move to lessen the political power of the Priests. Now the Pharaoh, not the priesthood, was the sole link between the people and Aten which effectively ended the power of the various temples.
http://www.crystalinks.com/akhnatonbabies.jpg
This shrine stela also from the early part of the Amarna period depicts Akhenaten, Nefertiti, and Princesses Meretaten, Mekeaten, and Ankhesenpaaten worshiping the Aten as a family. Dorothea Arnold in her article "Aspects of the Royal Female Image during the Amarna Period" discusses the plethora of reliefs depicting intimate family moments. While Akhenaten leans forward to give Meretaten a kiss, Mekeaten plays on her mother's lap and gazes up lovingly.

- "The archtype sungod in Christianity comes from the Ankh which all those Abrahamic religions come from the Amarna cult...and their persecution by the Egyptian Orthodox Religious Class."


Nonsense.


http://www.tektonics.org/copycat/akhenaten.html



Pharaoh Game

Did Akhenaten Influence Jewish Monotheism?

J. P. Holding


In the never-ending search for a natural explanation for the origins of the Judeo-Christian religion, skeptics have gone far afield looking for any person or idea they can point to and claim that the Jews or Christians "borrowed" from -- and we will look here at one of the most common claims from the mouths of less sophisticated skeptics. One Skeptic tried to pull this one on us; but the claim goes as far back as that expert in matters Biblical, Sigmund Freud [Red.HK, 4]. The claim: Monotheism, the belief in one god, is not a Hebrew original, but was borrowed from the Pharaoh Akhenaten.

A caveat or two is in order before we begin. First, I am inclined to accept the thesis of David Rohl that the Egyptian chronology is in need of revision and that Akhenaten was actually a contemporary of Saul and David. If that is true, then the argument is moot, and if anything, the borrowing occurred the other way around. However, for the sake of argument, we will assume here that the presently-accepted Egyptian chronology is correct, and explore whether or not Akhenaten's monotheism may have been the source for Jewish monotheism. (This also, of course, takes for granted the naturalistic assumption that Jewish monotheism was not instigated by a revelation, regardless of Akhenaten; but unless we wish to adopt Mormon methods of argumentation here, we will not address the issue from that perspective. The Atenism-Judaism borrowing connection begins with a general naturalistic assumption that not only denies the possibility of external revelation, but from a rational perspective, supposes that monotheism was a late development that evolved from polytheism, which had in turned evolved from polydemonism, and so on back. However, as McCarter notes, many "so-called primitive societies" who were/are at a Neolithic level otherwise "were in fact monotheistic and showed no signs of ever having been anything else." [McC.RR, 67] Even from a naturalistic perspective, the "borrowing"/development idea for monotheism has too many surds in the plotline to be taken seriously as an all-explaining thesis.) Second, it is open to question according to recent research whether "monotheism" is a proper word for Jewish belief anyway -- and on that account we refer the reader here.


What Has Cairo to Do With Jerusalem?

We should begin our study by listing in full the similarities between Atenism (as we shall call Akhenaten's religion) and Jewish monotheism. They are:

1. Both believe in one God who is a Creator and sustainer of the universe.

That's it.

Now if this is all there is to the similarities, one wonders whether critics who allege borrowing are really thinking clearly. Speaking from a strictly rational perspective, coming up with an idea that there is but one God (rather than several or none) who created and sustains the universe is little more than a natural variation upon a theme that we would expect people to hit upon often, even quite independently. This means, of course, that the critics don't need to allege borrowing from Akhenaten at all; at the bottom of the barrel, the appeal to Atenism is just veiled insult added to attempted injury. Nevertheless, we need now to explore the difference between Atenism and Judiasm, in order to make a rational case concerning alleged borrowing. We begin by digging into the soil from which Atenism grew.

Practically speaking, if any of the Egyptian pantheon were to be chosen as supreme, the sun god Re, or some variation upon him (like Aten), was the best candidate. Already in Egypt at the time of Akhenaten, there had been a longstanding story of Re as the first king to rule Egypt; afterwards, wearied of the affairs of men, this Re "retired to the heavens leaving his son the pharaoh to rule on earth in his stead." [Ald.A, 237] Not surprisingly, the time leading up to Akhenaten showed "a progressive increase" in the regard for the sun god, and a view of Re as a universal god (Not surprising, because the sun shines on everyone!). [Ald.A, 239] The 18th dynasty (in the period prior to Akhenaten) saw a rise of "Heliopolitan" cults and a "solarization" of the principal gods of Egypt. Thus Grimal [Grim.HAE, 238] avers that the change wrought by Akhenaten in this regard "was not in itself revolutionary and was far from being the revelatory religion that scholars have claimed it to be."

Beyond this, we see in the reign of Akhenaten a certain variance and expressed need to be different, and hence a reason or desire to establish a new religious tradition. Akhenaten was no conformist in other matters; so much so that Breasted referred to him as "the first individual in history." [Red.HK, 4, 6, 78-9, 137ff] This "heretic king" built a new capitol in Middle Egypt, and left the old administrative centers to the jackals; he tossed out cronies from the old political system and installed "rank outsiders"; he celebrated a jubilee much earlier in his reign than was normal, and made a much bigger to-do of it than was typical; tributes and gifts were handed out right and left (as Redford puts it mildly, "every day seemed a holiday"); he gave unusual prominence to his queen, Nefritity; within seven years of his reign, "the integrated system of politics, economics, and cult that Egypt had known for seventeen centuries had been drastically modified, if not turned upside down." Akhenaten was not one to keep the status quo going, and it is no surprise to see him breaking with tradition radically. (If all of this sounds good, it may need to be kept in mind that all of this may not have been the sign of what we would regard as a stable and sound mind. The downside is that Akhentanen appears to have been a poor administrator, and perhaps just a touch of a loony: Under his rule, the Canaanite provinces got out of control; his admiration of the sun god was so great that he held ceremonies out in the blazing Egyptian heat, and one record contains the complaint of an Assyrian ambassadorial party that they were made to stand out in the sun during diplomatic proceedings. Perhaps the most telling aspect of Akhenaten's reign from our persepctive is that royal carvings depict him regularly as "lounging, completely limp, in a chair or on a stool." [Red.HK, 234] To understand the problem somewhat, imagine if our media had only pictures of our President laying around the White House, slouched in the Oval Office in his pajamas. Atenism may have been less of a new religion and more of a way of an incompetent king gaining control over a rapidly-deterioriating and dangerous situation; as David puts it, Akhenaten looks to be much of "a political opportunist who introduced a new supreme deity in order to destroy the power of Amon-Re and his priesthood" [Dav.ERB, 165].)

With this history established, we now set out to explore the differences between Atenism and Jewish monotheism -- and here is where the road gets really rocky for the "borrowing" proponents.

1. Evangelism and exclusivism. Atenism was at its inception a typical Egyptian religion that "never bothered no one." Redford [Red.MA, 12] tells us:

It would never have occurred to an ancient Egyptian to postulate the supernatural as a monad -- a unitary, intellectually superior emanation. Much less would it have occurred to him to suppose that his eternal salvation depended on the recognition of such a monad. One man might choose to worship this god or that; another might even hold, for whatever reason, that other gods did not exist. But this was not important for an ancient Egyptian. He could not have cared less.

Ancient Egypt, then, was something of a politcally-correct religious paradise. Akhenaten's monotheism, in line with this view, was neither evangelical nor exclusive. Aten became "the" god for the royalty; but he never became a god over the average Egyptian Joe, and in fact, "the degree of intensity with which the new program was pursued" went downhill "the farther one got from the royal presence." [Red.HK, 175] Akhenaten showed no interest in promulgating his faith -- not until it became to his political advantage to do so (like when the priests gave him trouble -- then evangelism became rather convenient).

2. Henotheism to monotheism.Of relation to this is the possibility that Atenism did not apparently begin as monotheism, but as henotheism -- preference and superiority of one god over others. The earliest inscriptions of Akhenaten continue to refer to "gods" in the plural -- this may be because Akhenaten himself has not clarified his beliefs yet, or it may be that sculptors needed some time to get used to the idea of using the singular. [Red.MA, 22] A key here is an inscription which says that all gods other than Aten "have failed and 'ceased' to be effective." [Red.MA, 23] Does this mean that the other gods did once exist, but have been subjugated by Aten? Or does it mean they never really existed at all? The key verb is ambiguous. But it is possible that Akhenaten's thought underwent a sort of "mini-evolution" of it's own -- and note that it did not take thousands of years to happen!

3. Laws and ceremonies. We all know how many rules God handed down in the Pentateuch; what did Aten do that was the same? Actually, nothing. Atenism is "devoid of ethical content." [Red.MA, 113] As Redford puts it, while Aten is the creator (albeit with no associated "creation story"), he "seems to show no compassion on his creatures. He provides them with life and sustenance, but in a rather perfunctory way. No text tells us he hears the cry of the poor man, or succors the sick, or forgives the sinner." Similarly, while we know all about the cultic apparatrus spelled out in detail in the OT, Atenism offered no cultic acts (other than a basic daily sacirifice), no cult images, no mythology, no concept of ever-changing manifestations of the divine world. [Red.HK, 169-70, 178] Atenism has more in common with the Deism of the 18th-century West than it does with Jewish monotheism.

4. Pharaoh as mediator. Atenism had this common link with "normal" Egyptian religion: Akhenaten was regarded as the sole mediator for Aten on earth. The idea of a mediator is in itself not unusual: Moses is portrayed as serving something of that role, and other religions conceived of their clergy as providing some level of intermediary service. But with Atenism, this relationship went so far as to make it so that the sun-disc of Aten was "simply the hypostasis of divine kingship, a pale reflection of [Akhenaten's] own on earth, projected heavenwards." Akhenaten regarded himself as "ever the physical child of the sun-disc" and the sole high priest of Atenism. In further service of his own cult, the temples of other gods were closed, and their priesthoods were abandoned, including the funerary priesthood; as a result, the people literally (from their religious point of view) had to depend on Akhenaten for their fate in the afterlife. The focus on the pharaoh was so great that Allen [All.NP, 100] declares: "The god of Akhenaten's religion is Akhenaten himself."



Conclusion

Redford, who is regarded as the "foremost authority on Akhenaten" [Red.MA, 6] summarizes the view of Mosaic/Jewish monotheism being a ripoff of Atenism [ibid., 26, 113]:

...(T)hese imaginary creatures are now fading away one by one as the historical reality gradually emerges. There is little or no evidence to support the notion that Akhenaten was a progenitor of the full-blown monotheism that we find in the Bible...(it) had its own separate development.

...The monotheism of Akhenaten is so distinct from Yahwism that I wonder why the two are compared.

And Grimal [Grim.HAE, 228] adds:

It has been supposed that Atenism lies at the roots of Christianity, when in fact it does nothing more than reflect the common ground of Semitic civilizations.

Finally, Allen, quoting Assmann, observes that Atenism is "the origin less of the monotheistic world religions than of a natural philosophy. If this religion had succeeded, we should have expected it to produce a Thales rather than a Moses." [All.NP. 97] We would expect not the God of Judaism, but the Prime Mover of Aristotle, or the Deism of Thomas Jefferson, to come from the religion of Atenism. Skeptics and critics need to abandon the old saw that Moses "borrowed" monotheism from Akhenaten, for at this point it is not even rationally defensible.


Sources

1. Ald.A - Aldred, Cyril. Akhenaten: King Of Egypt. London: Thomas and Hudson, 1988.
2. All.NP - Allen, James P. "The Natural Philosophy of Akhenaten." in Religion and Philosophy in Ancient Egypt, Yale U. Press, 1985, pp. 89-101.
3. Dav.ERB - David, A. Rosalie. The Ancient Egyptians: Religious Beliefs and Practices London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982.
4. Grim.HAE - Grimal, Nicholas. A History of Ancient Egypt. Barnes and Noble, 1997.
5. McC.RR - McCarter, P. Kyle. "The Religious Reforms of Hezekiah and Josiah." in Aspects of Monotheism: How God is One. Washington: Biblical Archaeology Society, 1997.
6. Red.HK - Redford, Donald B. Akhenaten: The Heretic King. Princeton U. Press, 1984.
7. Red.MA - Redford, Donald B. "The Monotheism of Akhenaten." in Aspects of Monotheism.

J.P. Holding is a master of sophistry. Although I do not feel qualified to hold an opinion on this particular topic, people should be warned to take Holding's writings with a "pillar of salt."

http://www.tektonics.com/exposed.html

That "tektonics exposed" site has been apparently compiled by some stereotypical SORE LOSER crybaby.

Holding has been crushingly superior to a great majority of his opponents.


Petr

That "tektonics exposed" site has been apparently compiled by some stereotypical SORE LOSER crybaby.

Holding has been crushingly superior to a great majority of his opponents.Sore loser? Pffft. Maybe in the eyes of the self-congratulatory JP Holding. The guy is a joke. All he does is spew ad hominem attacks, puerile insults, and tendentious speculation. Even serious Christian apologists don't take him seriously. I certainly didn't when I was a believing Christian.

I could use the exact same techniques that Holding uses -- long-winded, tortuous drivel and wild, unfounded speculation peppered with rudeness and juvenile insults -- to defend anything. Why doesn't Holding give the same benefit of the doubt to the Koran or to any other "holy book" that he gives to the Bible? His arguments are nothing more than contortions of the most strained, straw-grasping sort.

It's pretty sad how Christians who are desperate to believe put so much stock in Holding/Turkel's site. I mean, c'mon -- the guy's a young-earth creationist, for Pete's sake. Anyone who thinks that the earth is less than billions of years old is either a moron or is terribly deluded and/or brainwashed. There is NOTHING too stupid for fundamentalist Christians to believe.

- "The guy is a joke. All he does is spew ad hominem attacks, puerile insults, and tendentious speculation."

Heal thyself, hypocrite.


- "Even serious Christian apologists don't take him seriously."

Got any evidence for this? I haven't heard about anything like that.


- "I certainly didn't when I was a believing Christian."

You knew Holding back in your "believing days"? When did your apostasy occur?


- "Anyone who thinks that the earth is less than billions of years old is either a moron or is terribly deluded and/or brainwashed."

Childish rah-rah blustering. When Mark Twain wrote his mediocre, blasphemous "Letters from the Earth" around 1900, he said that Earth was around 100 million years old - that was the evolutionist estimation BACK THEN.


Petr

- "The guy is a joke. All he does is spew ad hominem attacks, puerile insults, and tendentious speculation."

Heal thyself, hypocrite.Actually, Petr, you do a much better job of imitating your hero than I do.


- "Even serious Christian apologists don't take him seriously."
Got any evidence for this? I haven't heard about anything like that.Although I mainly think for myself, I used to read my share of work by serious Biblical scholars (e.g., Raymond Brown). Never once did I see a reference to any of Holding/Turkel's work. Perhaps you can provide me with an example? Say, a religious studies professor at a major university or theological seminary who has cited Holding/Turkel?


- "I certainly didn't when I was a believing Christian."

You knew Holding back in your "believing days"? When did your apostasy occur?It's tough to say precisely. I had doubts from an early age, but they didn't become serious until maybe a couple of years ago. Prior to that, I was too busy with college and then grad school to do much reading or thinking about my religion -- I just went to Church and confession regularly and put my doubts on the back burner. Well, once I finally started reading works by skeptics (to get both sides of the story), I discovered just how weak the foundations of Christian belief really are. Debates with skeptics also taught me a thing or two when they were able to make good points that I couldn't find answers for. I turned to Tektonics at one point to see if it had anything to offer, but I was less than impressed for the reasons I gave above. Eventually, after a lot of thought and soul-searching, I woke up and realized that the skeptics were right and that I hadn't been honest with myself. I just didn't believe anymore. There may be a well-hidden God out there, but there is NO evidence for one, and Christianity is no more plausible than any other religion.

By the way, here is an excellent example of the Turkel method of apologetics in action:

The Practice of Mother Goose Apologetics


Hey Diddle Diddle



The opening line of this rhyme is indicative of an oral tradition as its source. Oftentimes in preliterate societies, stories were told in large social gatherings. Because these societies lacked writing, certain professional storytellers, or bards, were commissioned to memorize the stories of these cultures. Opening lines were often made to be memorable to aid the storyteller in recalling the lines that follow. (See Cooper, P.J., Collins, R., & Saxby, M., The Power of Story, Melbourne, Macmillan Education,1994.)



The Cat and the Fiddle



Nothing here suggests, as the skeptics claim, that the cat actually is playing the fiddle in this line. What we have here is a simple combination of two unrelated subjects. This is no different than saying, “the sun and the moon.” Both may be heavenly objects, but both are clearly different from one another. There is no implication in the phrase, “the sun and the moon,” that each of these objects is in direct relation to one another. Clearly the moon is a satellite of the earth. It is composed mainly of rock. The sun, on the other hand, is not a satellite of the earth. In fact, the earth orbits the sun. The moon does not orbit the sun, it orbits the earth. The sun is composed of gases, not rock. It is a nuclear furnace. It is not cold and “dead” like the moon. So you see, those later artistic depictions of a cat playing a fiddle, based upon this line of the rhyme, are false. Therefore critics who claim, based on this line, that the story of “Hey Diddle Diddle” is somehow unscientific, unhistorical, and false are simply blowing smoke. Their argument is based on a misunderstanding of the text.



The Cow Jumped Over the Moon



Now, for many Mother Goose apologists, this line causes the most difficulty. It shouldn’t however. The moon is receding from the earth at roughly 4cm per year. What that means is that the moon was much closer to the earth in the past. Now, accounting for the gravitational pull of the earth, no one is certain that this gravitational pull has remained constant over time. If a skeptic tells you that gravity has had approximately the same pull on objects on the earth 4 billion years ago as it does today, ask them, “Were you there?” (See Ken Ham’s “Were You There?” essay. http://www.icr.org/pubs/btg-a/btg-010a.htm) They have no way of measuring the gravitational pull of the earth in the distant past than they do of proving that pond scum somehow evolved into men. No one was there to witness these things so their “guesses” are as good as anybody else’s.



So, if the moon were much closer to the earth in the past, it is possible that a cow—in an environment that had much less gravitational pull than we experience today—could have jumped over it. In fact, if the moon were closer in the past, and if the gravitational pull of the earth was lower, then the moon’s own gravitational pull could have helped the cow make the leap necessary to clear the lunar surface. There is nothing in the above passage that is completely impossible once the facts are considered.



The Little Dog Laughed To See Such Sport



Of course everyone has seen a dog pant in the summer. Many people have noted how, when they do this, the dog appears to be “smiling” and “laughing.” It is likely that if the moon were closer to the earth in the past then its reflective surface could have heated the earth to a higher temperature than it is today. If this were the case, which seems very likely, then of course a dog witnessing the jumping of the cow over the moon would have been in close enough proximity to the event to have been effected by the increased heat being generated by the reflective surface of the moon. Someone seeing this could easily say that the little dog was “laughing.”



And the Dish Ran Away With the Spoon



This line is likely a later interpolation of the original text. This can be seen by the fact that the word “and” is used to introduce the line. In ancient literature, “and” rarely preceded a line that would close a narrative. Therefore, this is indicative of a later scribal addition in order to “close out” the tale when it reached its written form. As a matter of fact, in some ancient copies of this text, this last line is missing. I think it would be fair to say that the scribe may have included this line since it rhymes with the second line preceding it (i.e. “moon” and “spoon”).



However, it may also have been an original line insofar as it does nicely rhyme and close out the poem. But if this is true, how could a dish run away with a spoon? What are the physical characteristics of a dish or a spoon that would allow it the ability of mobility? Like the skeptics who critique the cat and the fiddle, too much is being read into the text. There is no mention of “legs,” what most people assume are required for running. In fact, later artistic depictions of this line usually show a dish and a spoon complete with legs running away from the action of the cow, dog and cat. In these depictions also are full faces on the dish and the spoon! Sometimes you will even find illustrations showing the moon with a face! Now, I ask you, where in the text does one find warrant to depict these objects in such a way? Clearly the skeptics have been sloppy in their research into the literal understanding of this text and thus this is indicative of their poor critical thinking skills! They have swallowed hook, line and sinker, the later artistic representations of these passages and have not allowed the passages to speak for themselves!



Clearly, dishes and spoons do not have legs. How, then, could a dish “run away” with a spoon? Easy, once you understand basic physics. Let me make this as simple as possible. When a meal has been eaten on a dish (for what other use could there be for a dish?), utensils are oftentimes left on the plate. If left out long enough, residual food on the plate can harden. Anyone who owns a dish and a spoon, and who has left the spoon on the plate after a meal allowing the residual food to harden will attest, the spoon frequently becomes stuck to the plate. Plates are also round. What happens if you set a plate on edge? It rolls, of course! I think you can see where I’m going with this! Clearly, if this line was not a later interpolation in the text by a scribe, then what likely occurred was when the cow jumped over the moon the effects of her leaping could have tipped over a dish that had had a spoon stuck to it after the residual food had hardened on the plate. Because the plate would have probably toppled onto its side, the natural effects of gravity (even at its reduced state) would have pulled the plate down to a lower elevation. Anyone witnessing this could have mistaken (or poetically expressed) that this effect was actually a dish running away with a spoon. Obviously, there is no problem with understanding this line when it is read in context, when basic physics are consulted, and when preconceived ideas are abandoned for the facts.
URL: http://tektonics.com/goose.html

The above is meant to be facetious, but I think it does quite a good job at mimicking Turkel's methods.