The Greatest Lies in History by Alexander Canduci

Author:Alexander Canduci
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2016-07-12T00:00:00+00:00

THE ORIGINS OF MONOTHEISM

The worship of Aten, introduced into Egypt by Akhenaten, is the first verifiable example of monotheism in the world. Not surprisingly, there has been considerable discussion about a possible link between it and Judaism, the next great monotheistic faith to come out of the Middle East.

One of the first people to advance this theory was Sigmund Freud. He argued that Moses could have been a priest in the worship of Aten, and that he had been forced to leave Egypt with his followers during the counter-revolution that followed Akhenaten’s death. This would mean that the Exodus story records the overthrow of monotheism in Egypt, and its transfer to Canaan by the exiled members of the cult. Scholars have debated this ever since. Most have strong objections, pointing out that the texts of the Torah do not have any similarities to Aten worship, except for the focus on a single god. They also point out that Atenism used visual imagery of the solar disc, whereas such imagery is not found in early Judaism. And they argue that the three most important Judaic expressions for God, ‘Yahweh’, ‘Elohim’ and ‘Adonai’ are not linguistically related to the name ‘Aten’.

Arguments in favour of the theory point out that the Exodus story signifies that something important happened in Egypt, and that it involved a large number of people fleeing from that country. According to this view, any new religion is bound to generate a number of true believers who will remain converts for the rest of their lives. Since we now know that there was a purging of Atenism after the death of Akhenaten, it is possible that those who had been converted to the worship of Aten would have fled the country. And where would they have fled, but east, in the direction of the rising solar disc, the Aten itself? They then wandered the Sinai Desert for many years before entering the land of Canaan and introducing their worship of one god to the locals. As they intermingled with the native Semites, their religion merged with local religious customs to form a new religion—Judaism. It is widely accepted that there are clear resemblances between Akhenaten’s ‘Great Hymn to the Aten’ and the Biblical Psalm 104.

The historical observation that Akhenaten’s reign occurred some one hundred years before the time of Moses might seem to present a problem for this theory. However, a period of 300 years between the Aten worshippers’ flight from Egypt and the emergence of Judaism would account for changes in the worship of the one god, and the emergence of the new religion.

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