Dear Commons Community,

I read the book, Christianity: An Ancient Egyptian Religion by Ahmed Osman over the summer but was tardy in posting about it on this blog.  It is a provocative book first published in 1998,  that argues that many foundational elements of Christianity are deeply rooted in ancient Egyptian religious traditions rather than exclusively emerging from Judaea. Osman draws comparisons between Old Testament narratives and Egyptian history, suggesting that prominent biblical figures like Moses and Joshua correspond to Egyptian historical personas. He further claims that key Christian doctrines—including monotheism, the Trinity, the virgin birth, and concepts of life after death—are Egyptian in origin.

The book also contends that early Christianity functioned as an Egyptian mystery religion until its suppression by Roman authorities in the 4th century. Osman highlights how the Roman destruction of the Alexandrian library in 391 AD erased much evidence of Christianity’s Egyptian foundations, as part of the Roman effort to recast Christianity as a Judaean religion to consolidate political power​.

Osman’s work has been criticized by some and praised by others. I found some of Osman’s explanations a stretch.

Below is a review by Colin O’Shea that appeared in goodreads and a response from a reader.

Tony

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goodreads

Colin O’Shea

March 25, 2021

Christianity: An Ancient Egyptian Religion by Ahmed Osman Contends that the roots of Christian belief come not from Judaea but from Egypt.

• Shows that the Romans fabricated their own version of Christianity and burned the Alexandrian library as a way of maintaining political power

• Builds on the arguments of the author’s previous books The Hebrew Pharaohs of Egypt, Moses and Akhenaten, and Jesus in the House of the Pharaohs

In An Ancient Egyptian Religion author Ahmed Osman contends that the roots of Christian belief spring not from Judaea but from Egypt. He compares the chronology of the Old Testament and its factual content with ancient Egyptian records to show that the major characters of the Hebrew scriptures–including Solomon, David, Moses, and Joshua–are based on Egyptian historical figures. He further suggests that not only were these personalities and the stories associated with them cultivated on the banks of the Nile, but the major tenets of Christian belief–the One God, the Trinity, the hierarchy of heaven, life after death, and the virgin birth–are all Egyptian in origin. He likewise provides a convincing argument that Jesus himself came out of Egypt.

With the help of modern archaeological findings, Osman shows that Christianity survived as an Egyptian mystery cult until the fourth century A.D., when the Romans embarked on a mission of suppression and persecution. In A.D. 391 the Roman-appointed Bishop Theophilus led a mob into the Serapeum quarter of Alexandria and burned the Alexandrian library, destroying all records of the true Egyptian roots of Christianity. The Romans’ version of Christianity, manufactured to maintain political power, claimed that Christianity originated in Judaea. In An Ancient Egyptian Religion Osman restores Egypt to its rightful place in the history of Christianity.

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Here are comments from one of the readers of the goodreads review.

This book was elucidating on some aspects of the historicity of biblical stories and characters, and offers an engaging well-researched opinion on the significance of the Egyptian Amarna Dynasty and its theological reformation in shaping the early religious beliefs and writings of the Israelites who absconded from Egypt, and subsequently the New Testament Gospels (they being, its claimed, a reiteration of an ancient tradition). This last point undermines the idea of a 1st century historical Jesus figure being responsible for the Christian religion and basically shifts the onus to another time and place entirely, that is Egypt of the fourteenth millennium BC. It also suggests a deep connection between that period’s ruling dynasty and the Isrealites, that ended shortly after the death of Tutankhamun with a military coup and the ascension of a new dynasty, eviscerating the spiritual legacy of the previous dynastic mono-theist “heretics”. I’m fairly obsessed with learning about the roots of Christianity and religion in general, as well as all things ancient Egyptian, and this book didn’t disappoint.

Next on my list in this regard is a book which also pertains to the nonfactual historicity of the Jesus story, and actually provides evidence that the New testament was a codification and reiteration of a Messianic tradition in writing by a Roman elite who wished to quell and satiate a Jewish revolt in the 1st century by proffering them a peaceful “turn the other cheek” type savior, thus saving themselves the hassle of constant uprisings, and providing them with a mechanism of control that ended up being much more powerful than violent force. It’s called “Caesar’s Messiah – Joseph Atwill”. If true, that would have to be an example of the most effective propaganda ever created.

And of course, an historical Jesus isn’t really required for the validity of a positive spiritual message, as Osman’s book also contends; that there is a spiritual aspect of Christ that is distinct from any historical claims to truth, this being the underlying spiritual teaching passed down for centuries before being co-opted (and possibly partly created) by the Roman empire. In this regards, I suggest investigation of the Gnostic christian tradition, which provides a literature apparently untouched by ancient authoritarian influence due to being hidden when the authorities were systematically destroying the physical vestiges of rival ideologies, as all authoritarian states/ideologies have done and do. I’m referring to the Nag Hammadi texts, and the Judeo-Christian Essenes’ Dead Sea Scrolls.

John McWhorter

Dear Commons Community,

John McWhorter, a linguistics professor at Columbia University, and an opinion writer for The New York Times had an essay yesterday entitled, “Cleopatra Is Not Our Mother”. His theme is that Black Americans need to let go of the myth that we have a common Egyptian heritage.  Here  is an excerpt:

“I have always found something problematic about this focus on ancient Egypt as a historical precursor to American Blackness. I’m going to step aside from the controversies over just what color the ancient Egyptians were. The simple fact is that Black Americans are not on the whole their descendants. They are the descendants of all of Africa, a vast and endlessly varied continent. Its peoples have warred with and until not so very long ago even enslaved one another, as rampantly as humans worldwide always have. It is home to over 2,000 languages — almost every third language in the world. Preferring and massaging the single halcyon dream of ancient Egypt misses all of that rich diversity, misreading the historical record and depriving us of the true breadth of our heritage.

Most likely not a single enslaved Black person was brought to America from Cairo or Alexandria. They were brought to America from the West African coast, from what is now Senegal down to Angola. Senegal alone is over 3,000 miles across a desert to the southwest of Cairo as the crow flies — about as far as New York City is from Anchorage or Dublin. Black America tracing itself to Egypt makes as much historical sense as would Czechs deciding to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, seek out first editions of James Joyce and favor tartans as an expression of being European.”

McWhorten makes a good argument. 

His entire essay can be read below.

Tony

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The New York Times

Cleopatra is not our mother!

By John McWhorter

Opinion Writer

Since the 19th century, a strain in Black American culture has claimed ancient Egypt as ancestor and inspiration. A fascination with that long-ago land has permeated Black art deeply enough to seem like one of its very foundations. In the early 20th century, the emblem of the N.A.A.C.P. house organ, “The Crisis,” looked like a sphinx, and many covers featured beautiful Egyptian motifs. In the 1990s, many thinkers warmly embraced the book “Black Athena” by the historian Martin Bernal, which made the claim — since rather roundly debunked — that the ancient Greeks had stolen much of the glory of their culture from “Black” Egypt. So strong has this current of thought been that it fills an exhibition currently on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art titled “Flight Into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt, 1876-Now.”

Beautiful work, make no mistake. But I have always found something problematic about this focus on ancient Egypt as a historical precursor to American Blackness. I’m going to step aside from the controversies over just what color the ancient Egyptians were. The simple fact is that Black Americans are not on the whole their descendants. They are the descendants of all of Africa, a vast and endlessly varied continent. Its peoples have warred with and until not so very long ago even enslaved one another, as rampantly as humans worldwide always have. It is home to over 2,000 languages — almost every third language in the world. Preferring and massaging the single halcyon dream of ancient Egypt misses all of that rich diversity, misreading the historical record and depriving us of the true breadth of our heritage.

Most likely not a single enslaved Black person was brought to America from Cairo or Alexandria. They were brought to America from the West African coast, from what is now Senegal down to Angola. Senegal alone is over 3,000 miles across a desert to the southwest of Cairo as the crow flies — about as far as New York City is from Anchorage or Dublin. Black America tracing itself to Egypt makes as much historical sense as would Czechs deciding to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, seek out first editions of James Joyce and favor tartans as an expression of being European.

Sure, all cultures mythologize their past to an extent. Ta-Nehisi Coates in his new book, “The Message,” argues that as Black people, “we have a right to imagine ourselves as pharoahs.” But we also have a right to imagine ourselves as sultans, maharajahs or New Guinea hunter-gatherers. What was wrong with what we actually were?

This question is especially urgent as the abiding fondness for the Egypt idea tends to sideline the astonishing history of the empires that enslaved Americans actually emerged from and amid. In the 13th century, the Mali Empire produced a kind of Magna Carta called the Kouroukan Fouga. It was mindful of the rights of women to a degree surprising for any document before, roughly, Ms. magazine, counseling respect for “women, our mothers.” It stipulated that a man’s insanity or impotence was justification for a woman to seek divorce. European history teaches us to associate ancient empires with the ambition of overseas exploration, and the Mali Empire was no exception. Musa, the grandson of the empire’s founder, Sundiata Keita, sent out hundreds of ships to explore the great beyond.

South of Mali in what is today Angola was the kingdom of the Kongo, which was ruled in the mid-17th century by Manikongo Garcia II. The historian Simon Sebag Montefiore has described him as holding “court amid Flemish tapestries, wearing Indian linens, eating with cutlery of American silver in the company of titled Kongo nobles and bishops in red sashes, while secretaries took dictation.” His rival was the queen of the neighboring Ndongo kingdom, Nzinga Mbande. She dressed in men’s clothes and excelled as a warrior; in off hours she enjoyed male concubines. Surely a ripe source for creative imagination.

In what we now call Benin once stood the Dahomey kingdom. Its capital could boast 12 palaces, festooned with bas-relief carvings depicting the history of the kingdom, every bit as impressive as what visitors see at the Met’s Egyptian rooms. King Houegbadja, who ruled in the 17th century, went about with an entourage of female soldiers. All of this is grounds for celebration and creativity that does not require drawing an imaginary line from King Tut to Will Smith.

I suspect that one reason Black Americans are drawn to ancient Egypt is that it may seem grander, more advanced than the West African empires. But that impression is based partly on how well Egypt’s monuments have survived in desert conditions. Monuments of the West African empires, hewed from forested regions and long since grown over, can be harder to reconstruct.

The history of ancient Egypt, too, is preserved in more detail than that of most West African empires because Egypt had a writing system. But that doesn’t mean that the society was more sophisticated. Enormously complex societies thrived in antiquity without writing, such as the Catalhoyuk in Turkey and the Cahokia in Illinois.

Of course, Black Americans aren’t the only ones who fetishize ancient Egypt. In the 18th and 19th centuries, many European and American thinkers participated in an Egyptology craze. It elevated ancient Egypt, with its Rosetta Stone, Cleopatra and such as “civilized” while casting sub-Saharan Africans as dismissible primitives. The philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, for example, was renowned for his contemptuous take on the sub-Saharan region he called “Africa proper” — in effect, the real Africa. For him, this region was “unhistorical” with an “undeveloped spirit.”

That attitude lingered. When I was a young language-loving kid, I got a coloring book about the celebration of Christmas in 19 countries. I enjoyed it so much that I still have it. Each entry describes the customs in both English and the country’s official language. There was a serious flub, though: The description of Ethiopia’s customs was rendered in Swahili, which is not spoken in Ethiopia; its national language is Amharic, a relative of Hebrew and Arabic. By the standards of 1972 when the book was written, including an African country at all was ahead of the curve, but it seems that a residual sense of overgeneralization was still at play. I can’t see them as having described Denmark’s Christmas traditions in German.

The beauty of modern American Blackness is not a function of sphinxes, Nefertiti and hanging out with ancient Greeks. When creating and burnishing our stories, our myths, our art, we should remember where we really came from. The evidence is all around us. In the 1930s, the pioneering Black linguist Lorenzo Dow Turner found speakers of the Gullah Creole language on the coast of South Carolina and Georgia who could still sing songs in the Mende language of Sierra Leone. The reason peanuts are called goobers in the South (and in the candy that’s popular at movie theater concession stands) is that they were called nguba in the Kikongo language of Angola and other countries.

Kunta Kinte, in the book and later two miniseries of “Roots,” spoke the Mandinka language of the Mali Empire. Mythology is relevant here. Alex Haley, who wrote the novel, claimed that “Roots” was based on historical sources, but it has since become clear that he largely concocted the story of his ancestors, expanding shreds of fact into fiction he later called “faction.” OK, “Roots” is legend rather than scholarship. But at least it depicts one of Black Americans’ true places of origin.

I wish we could let go of the idea that ancient Egypt is Black Americans’ common heritage. My cheek swab traces me to Senegal and Angola. Preferences will differ on this, but as for me, I get ancestral pride from my relatives here in America, such as the fierce great-aunt I knew as T.I., who could sprint up subway steps without missing a beat at 92, or Mom Springer, who was a more or less out lesbian and jazz saxophonist in the 1920s. If I need some Africa in the mix, the enlightenment of Kouroukan Fouga and the fierceness of Nzinga Mbande do me just fine.

Angelina Jolie in the movie “Maria.” (Netflix)

Dear Commons Community,

Last night, Elaine and I saw the movie “Maria” starring Angelina Jolie as the opera diva, Maria Callas.  It specifically focuses on the last five days of her life before she succumbs to an over-reliance on drugs.  I thought Jolie was excellent in this complicated role of a complicated Callas.  There are a number of flashbacks which broaden the story. We see highlights of her performances, her relationship with Aristotle Onassis, and even a lunch she has with President John F. Kennedy. 

Elaine and I enjoyed it and we had a long discussion of it over dinner afterwards.  We both agreed that this was a very difficult movie to pull-off and real challenge for Jolie. Opera enthusiasts will probably love it – not sure about others.

Below is a review that appeared in the Los Angeles Times. 

Here is a url for an article on Maria Callas and Angelina Jolie that was published  in The New York Times.  It offers good insight into both Callas and Jolie.

Tony

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Los Angeles Times

Review: Angelina Jolie glides through ‘Maria’ like an iceberg, but a chilly Callas isn’t enough

Angelina Jolie in the movie “Maria.”

(Pablo Larraín / Netflix)

By Amy Nicholson  

Nov. 27, 2024

Maria Callas seized fame as the voice of Tosca, Medea and Carmen, opera’s eternally doomed heroines. If opera still commands audiences a century from now, perhaps it will sing of Callas, a fighter who survived the Nazi occupation of Greece, a heckling at La Scala, a media hazing on multiple continents and a humiliating public affair only to be hobbled by her own coping tools: sedatives and starvation.

“Maria,” starring Angelina Jolie, is director Pablo Larraín’s latest effort to build his own canon of 20th-century tragediennes. His previous melodramas “Jackie” and “Spencer” were fables about two painfully self-aware celebrities at their nadirs: Larraín peeked behind Jacqueline Kennedy‘s and Princess Diana’s facades less to humanize them than to expose their wounds. Callas, however, was infamous for her fits, so Larraín, perversely and underwhelmingly, chooses to respect her imperious veneer. If she’s the big boss-level diva he’s been working up to, Larraín lets her win.

This is Callas at the end of her life. Her corpse is the first thing we see onscreen, although cinematographer Edward Lachman has such a dazzling trick of cramming chandeliers into the frame that it takes a minute to spot her body. In the flashbacks that follow, Callas attempts to grandly dismiss liver disease as though it were spoiled wine. She spends most of the film doped up on Quaaludes, which in ’70s Paris were sold under the brand name Mandrax. Screenwriter Steven Knight even has her stroll around with an imaginary character named Mandrax (Kodi Smit-McPhee), a TV reporter she’s hallucinated into existence in order to feel important. Mandrax tosses her softball questions. She swats them down.

If you’ve seen any old interviews with Callas, you know that actual journalists tended to be rude with her. First, they’d ask Callas if she was a monster. Then they’d needle her about spending nine years with Aristotle Onassis only to get dumped for the future Jackie O. They needed to prick the goddess to see if she bled.

Early on, Callas parried these inquisitions with humor. Accused of hurtling a bottle of brandy at a director, she replied: “I wish I did. It would be a shame for the bottle.” As Callas got older, though, she got stiffer, and that’s the version we’re staring at here. Regal, guarded and stubborn, Jolie plays Callas as a lonely 50-something who rejected love, fame, joy and music and won’t fight that hard to get them back. Her character arc is just a blueprint plan of one; from scene to scene, you’re never sure whether she’s going to take action. Callas wants to be adored but she doesn’t want to be known. Her exhausted housekeepers Ferruccio (Pierfrancesco Favino) and Bruna (Alba Rohrwacher) speak volumes with every silent, fearful look, and when they get too personal with her, Callas commands them to move the piano as punishment.

Larraín makes a half-hearted attempt to recast Callas as a feminist martyr, alleging, as obliquely as possible, that she was once forced to trade her body to soldiers for cash and food. Biographical dots are unapologetically skipped, including her marriage to a man who doesn’t even merit a name before he’s ditched for Onassis (Haluk Bilginer). Adding to the disorientation, young Callas (Aggelina Papadopoulou) looks nothing like Jolie — not her lips, eyes, nose, jaw, frame, nothing. Yet the casting choice highlights how Callas recast herself in the 1950s, shedding a third of her body mass to transform from a zaftig soprano cliché into a high-fashion sylph (and in the process, sacrificing a bit of her oomph).

Callas could fold herself in a cloak and force an audience to focus on her. Her stillness was magnetic. All the emotions flooded out through her eyes and throat. Jolie trained in opera for seven months to prepare for the role and, according to Larraín, did her own singing on set. What we’re hearing is her voice blended into the real one at concentrations that range from 1% to 70% — the latter, I assume, in the scenes when a retired Callas tests her own vocal strength. To my ears, Jolie sounds fantastic, the kind of voice that would knock ’em dead on karaoke night. But peak Callas hits the senses like a lightning strike. Larraín tries to capture that power in his first close-up of Jolie, shoulders bare, singing at the camera in bold black and white. But the starkness of the shot works against him, giving us too much time to notice that Jolie’s throat barely seems to move, to wonder if her eyes shouldn’t have more passion.

Blazing passion used to be Jolie’s whole thing. I could close my eyes right now and see the wicked grin that made her a star in 1999’s “Girl, Interrupted.” But having endured her own tabloid scrutiny, she too has emerged too tightly controlled. Here, there’s only one second in one montage when, during a performance of Medea, Jolie unleashes a hot glare. The moment is so electric that you wish the whole film had that juice. We don’t see Callas that vibrant again until the end credits, and then, it’s archival footage of the real thing flashing a mischievous smile.“A song should never be perfect,” Callas insists. I agree. Some critics called her singing ugly. Not in the factual sense, because that would be crazy, but closer to how fashionistas know to add one discordant accessory. The clash keeps things interesting. Jolie, however, uses perfection as armor, so no matter how much her Callas insists that opera is intoxicating, no matter how intoxicated her character actually is, her performance is a sober take on madness.

Larraín allows himself the occasional visual thrill, say a throng of Parisians suddenly assembling into a chorus. Otherwise, we’re so deep inside Callas’ delusions that things just feel flat. “What is real and what is not real is my business,” she pronounces, having bent the world to her will.

Oddly, after swooning along with giant aria after giant aria, I left the theater fixating on one of Larraín’s smallest sound-design choices. It comes when Callas, resplendent even in a bathrobe, glides into the kitchen to sing at Bruna while the poor deary cooks her an omelet. The solo goes on forever, long enough to make the point that, yes, Callas had fans clamoring outside the Metropolitan Opera, but she could also be a bit of a bore. And then, mid-song, Larraín adds a tiny clang — the sound of the spatula hitting the pan — to let us know that even in the prima donna’s fiercely protected bubble, her ego doesn’t always trump a plate of eggs.

I wish Larraín had cut Callas down to size more. He’s too protective of his fellow artist to slosh around in the fury that fueled her art. Callas could sing three octaves, but the film is mostly one note.

Dear Commons Community,

Joseph Aoun, President of Northeastern University, has just published a 2nd edition of his book, Robot Proof, Higher Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.  The first was well-done and provided important commentary on the state of American higher education and its future.  I posted about it in 2017 (see:  https://apicciano.commons.gc.cuny.edu/2017/10/23/robot-proof-higher-education-in-the-age-of-artificial-intelligence-by-joseph-e-aoun/)  It was an important addition to the literature base on technology and the academy.

This 2nd edition is Aoun’s attempt to update the first edition in light of the emergence of generative AI with the release of ChatGPT in November 2022.  For those of us who write regularly about technology, we always hope that what we write does not become dated too quickly because of a newer or more advanced technology.  I am currently writing a 2nd edition of my book, Online Education:  Foundations, Planning and Pedagogy, that was published in 2018, for essentially the same reason Aoun is updating Robot Proof…  Aoun comments in the Preface that the emergence of generative AI is the main reason”I have revisited this book…”

If you have read and enjoyed the 1st edition, you will probably enjoyed Aoun’s update.

Below is a brief review of the 2nd edition.

Tony

About Robot-Proof, revised and updated edition