유란시아 책
III 부. 유란시아의 역사
Paper 95
The Melchizedek Teachings in the Levant
The Melchizedek Teachings in the Levant
95:0.1 (1042.1)
AS INDIA gave rise to many of the religions and philosophies of eastern Asia, so the Levant was the homeland of the faiths of the Occidental world. The Salem missionaries spread out all over southwestern Asia, through Palestine, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Iran, and Arabia, everywhere proclaiming the good news of the gospel of Machiventa Melchizedek. In some of these lands their teachings bore fruit; in others they met with varying success. Sometimes their failures were due to lack of wisdom, sometimes to circumstances beyond their control.
95:1.1 (1042.2)
By 2000 b.c. the religions of Mesopotamia had just about lost the teachings of the Sethites and were largely under the influence of the primitive beliefs of two groups of invaders, the Bedouin Semites who had filtered in from the western desert and the barbarian horsemen who had come down from the north.
95:1.2 (1042.3)
But the custom of the early Adamite peoples in honoring the seventh day of the week never completely disappeared in Mesopotamia. Only, during the Melchizedek era, the seventh day was regarded as the worst of bad luck. It was taboo-ridden; it was unlawful to go on a journey, cook food, or make a fire on the evil seventh day. The Jews carried back to Palestine many of the Mesopotamian taboos which they had found resting on the Babylonian observance of the seventh day, the Shabattum.
95:1.3 (1042.4)
Although the Salem teachers did much to refine and uplift the religions of Mesopotamia, they did not succeed in bringing the various peoples to the permanent recognition of one God. Such teaching gained the ascendancy for more than one hundred and fifty years and then gradually gave way to the older belief in a multiplicity of deities.
95:1.4 (1042.5)
The Salem teachers greatly reduced the number of the gods of Mesopotamia, at one time bringing the chief deities down to seven: Bel, Shamash, Nabu, Anu, Ea, Marduk, and Sin. At the height of the new teaching they exalted three of these gods to supremacy over all others, the Babylonian triad: Bel, Ea, and Anu, the gods of earth, sea, and sky. Still other triads grew up in different localities, all reminiscent of the trinity teachings of the Andites and the Sumerians and based on the belief of the Salemites in Melchizedek’s insignia of the three circles.
95:1.5 (1042.6)
Never did the Salem teachers fully overcome the popularity of Ishtar, the mother of gods and the spirit of sex fertility. They did much to refine the worship of this goddess, but the Babylonians and their neighbors had never completely outgrown their disguised forms of sex worship. It had become a universal practice throughout Mesopotamia for all women to submit, at least once in early life, to the embrace of strangers; this was thought to be a devotion required by Ishtar, and it was believed that fertility was largely dependent on this sex sacrifice.
95:1.6 (1043.1)
The early progress of the Melchizedek teaching was highly gratifying until Nabodad, the leader of the school at Kish, decided to make a concerted attack upon the prevalent practices of temple harlotry. But the Salem missionaries failed in their effort to bring about this social reform, and in the wreck of this failure all their more important spiritual and philosophic teachings went down in defeat.
95:1.7 (1043.2)
This defeat of the Salem gospel was immediately followed by a great increase in the cult of Ishtar, a ritual which had already invaded Palestine as Ashtoreth, Egypt as Isis, Greece as Aphrodite, and the northern tribes as Astarte. And it was in connection with this revival of the worship of Ishtar that the Babylonian priests turned anew to stargazing; astrology experienced its last great Mesopotamian revival, fortunetelling became the vogue, and for centuries the priesthood increasingly deteriorated.
멜기세덱은 추종자들에게, 만유의 아버지요 조물주이신 유일한 하나님을 가르치도록, 그리고 오직 신앙으로 신성한 은혜를 받을 수 있다는 복음만 전파하도록 훈계했었다. 그러나 새 진리를 가르치는 선생들은, 너무 많은 것을 시도하는, 느린 진화를 갑작스런 혁명으로 대체시키려는 오류를 종종 범했다. 메소포타미아에서 활동한 멜기세덱 선교사들은, 그 민족에게 너무 높은 도덕 기준을 제시했으며;너무 많은 것을 시도했고, 그들의 고귀한 대의{大義}는 실패로 끝났다. 명확한 복음을 설교할 수 있는, 우주 아버지가 실체라는 진리를 선포할 수 있는 권한이 그들에게 주어졌지만, 그들은 사회관행을 개선하는, 외견상 가치 있는 목적에 집착하게 됐으며, 그리하여 그들의 위대한 사명은 탈선했고, 좌절과 망각 속에서 사실상 사라졌다.
95:1.8 (1043.3)
Melchizedek had warned his followers to teach about the one God, the Father and Maker of all, and to preach only the gospel of divine favor through faith alone. But it has often been the error of the teachers of new truth to attempt too much, to attempt to supplant slow evolution by sudden revolution. The Melchizedek missionaries in Mesopotamia raised a moral standard too high for the people; they attempted too much, and their noble cause went down in defeat. They had been commissioned to preach a definite gospel, to proclaim the truth of the reality of the Universal Father, but they became entangled in the apparently worthy cause of reforming the mores, and thus was their great mission sidetracked and virtually lost in frustration and oblivion.
95:1.9 (1043.4)
In one generation the Salem headquarters at Kish came to an end, and the propaganda of the belief in one God virtually ceased throughout Mesopotamia. But remnants of the Salem schools persisted. Small bands scattered here and there continued their belief in the one Creator and fought against the idolatry and immorality of the Mesopotamian priests.
구약 성경의 시편 가운데 다수를 돌 위에 새긴 사람은 바로, 자신들의 가르침이 거부된 뒤에 활동하던 살렘 선교사들이었으며, 후대에 이르러서는 포로로 잡혀온 히브리인 제사장들이 이것들을 거기서 발견했고, 나중에는 유대인이 썼다고 주장하는 찬미의 시{詩}를 수집하면서 이것들을 거기에 포함시켰다. 바벨론에서 가져온 이 아름다운 성시{聖詩}들은 벨-마르덕 신전에 새겨진 글이 아니며;이 성시들은 초기 살렘 선교사들 후손의 작품이었고, 바벨론 사제들이 수집한 마술적인 것과는 뚜렷이 대조된다. 욥기는 키쉬에 있던, 그리고 메소포타미아 전역에 있던 살렘 학교의 교훈이 아주 잘 반영된 작품이다.
95:1.10 (1043.5)
It was the Salem missionaries of the period following the rejection of their teaching who wrote many of the Old Testament Psalms, inscribing them on stone, where later-day Hebrew priests found them during the captivity and subsequently incorporated them among the collection of hymns ascribed to Jewish authorship. These beautiful psalms from Babylon were not written in the temples of Bel-Marduk; they were the work of the descendants of the earlier Salem missionaries, and they are a striking contrast to the magical conglomerations of the Babylonian priests. The Book of Job is a fairly good reflection of the teachings of the Salem school at Kish and throughout Mesopotamia.
95:1.11 (1043.6)
Much of the Mesopotamian religious culture found its way into Hebrew literature and liturgy by way of Egypt through the work of Amenemope and Ikhnaton. The Egyptians remarkably preserved the teachings of social obligation derived from the earlier Andite Mesopotamians and so largely lost by the later Babylonians who occupied the Euphrates valley.
원래 멜기세덱 교훈은 이집트에서 실제로 가장 깊이 뿌리내렸고, 나중에 거기서 유럽으로 퍼져나갔다. 나일 강 유역의 진화 종교는, 놋족속과 아담족속 그리고 후대에는 유프라테스 강 유역의 안드족속 민족 가운데 우세한 종족들이 들어옴으로써 주기적으로 증대됐다. 때로는, 이집트의 민간 경영자 가운데 다수가 수메르인이었다. 이 시기에 세계 인종들이 인도에서 가장 많이 섞인 것처럼, 이집트에서는 유란시아에서 발견될 수 있는 가장 철저하게 혼합된 유형의 종교 철학이 조성됐고, 이것은 나일 강 유역에서 세계 여러 지역으로 퍼져나갔다. 유대인은 세상 창조에 대한 관념 대부분을 바벨론인으로부터 흡수했으며, 한편 신성한 섭리 개념은 이집트인으로부터 도입했다.
95:2.1 (1043.7)
The original Melchizedek teachings really took their deepest root in Egypt, from where they subsequently spread to Europe. The evolutionary religion of the Nile valley was periodically augmented by the arrival of superior strains of Nodite, Adamite, and later Andite peoples of the Euphrates valley. From time to time, many of the Egyptian civil administrators were Sumerians. As India in these days harbored the highest mixture of the world races, so Egypt fostered the most thoroughly blended type of religious philosophy to be found on Urantia, and from the Nile valley it spread to many parts of the world. The Jews received much of their idea of the creation of the world from the Babylonians, but they derived the concept of divine Providence from the Egyptians.
살렘 교훈에 대하여 이집트가 메소포타미아보다 더 호의적이었던 것은, 철학 또는 종교 성향보다 정치와 도덕 성향 때문이었다. 권좌를 쟁취한 후에, 이집트의 각 부족 지도자는 자기 부족의 신이 다른 모든 신의 원조{元祖} 신격이요 창조자라고 선포함으로써, 자기 왕조를 영속시키려고 애썼다. 이집트인은 이런 식으로 초월신 관념에 점점 익숙해졌는데, 이것은 나중에 우주를 창조한 신격의 교리로 가는 디딤돌이 됐다. 일신교 관념은 이집트에서 여러 세기 동안 오락가락 했는데, 유일하신 하나님에 대한 믿음이 항상 토대를 이뤘으나, 진화하는 다신론{多神論} 개념을 상당히 억제하지는 못했다.
95:2.2 (1044.1)
It was political and moral, rather than philosophic or religious, tendencies that rendered Egypt more favorable to the Salem teaching than Mesopotamia. Each tribal leader in Egypt, after fighting his way to the throne, sought to perpetuate his dynasty by proclaiming his tribal god the original deity and creator of all other gods. In this way the Egyptians gradually got used to the idea of a supergod, a steppingstone to the later doctrine of a universal creator Deity. The idea of monotheism wavered back and forth in Egypt for many centuries, the belief in one God always gaining ground but never quite dominating the evolving concepts of polytheism.
95:2.3 (1044.2)
For ages the Egyptian peoples had been given to the worship of nature gods; more particularly did each of the two-score separate tribes have a special group god, one worshiping the bull, another the lion, a third the ram, and so on. Still earlier they had been totem tribes, very much like the Amerinds.
시간이 지나자, 이집트인은 벽돌을 사용하지 않은 무덤에 놓인 시신이 소다 성분을 함유한 모래 작용으로 인해 보호되는--곧 미라가 되는-- 반면, 벽돌로 지은 무덤에 장사된 것은 부패된다는 것을 발견했다. 여러 가지 실험을 하도록 이런 관찰이 이끌었고, 나중에는 결국 시체를 미라로 만드는 풍습을 낳게 했다. 이집트인은, 시신을 보존함으로써 그가 미래의 생애로 나아가도록 도와준다고 믿었다. 시체가 부패한 후 먼 훗날에도 그 사람을 잘 알아볼 수 있도록, 시체 옆에 매장용 조각품을 뒀고, 관 위에도 비슷한 모습을 새겼다. 이런 매장용 조각상 만들기가, 이집트의 예술을 크게 개선했다.
95:2.4 (1044.3)
In time the Egyptians observed that dead bodies placed in brickless graves were preserved—embalmed—by the action of the soda-impregnated sand, while those buried in brick vaults decayed. These observations led to those experiments which resulted in the later practice of embalming the dead. The Egyptians believed that preservation of the body facilitated one’s passage through the future life. That the individual might properly be identified in the distant future after the decay of the body, they placed a burial statue in the tomb along with the corpse, carving a likeness on the coffin. The making of these burial statues led to great improvement in Egyptian art.
이집트인은 무덤이 시신을 지켜주고, 그 결과로 사후{死後}의 생존을 쾌적하게 해준다는 신념을 여러 세기 동안 간직했다. 마술 풍습의 후대 진화는, 인생들에게 태어날 때부터 죽을 때까지 부담을 줬지만, 무덤을 믿는 종교로부터 그들을 가장 효과적으로 구출했다. 사제들은, “지하 세계에서 사람의 심장을 빼앗기는 일”을 방지할 수 있다고 믿는 마법의 문장{文章}을 관{棺}에 새기려고 했다. 곧 이런 다양한 내용의 마법 문장이 사자의 서{死者의 書}로 수집되어 보존됐다. 그러나 나일 강 유역에서 마법 제례식은, 당시 제례식이 흔치않게 도달하는 정도까지, 일찍부터 양심과 성품의 분야와 관련됐다. 그리고 나중에는, 구원받는 것은 정교한 무덤보다 이런 윤리적이고 도덕적인 이상{理想}에 달려있었다.
95:2.5 (1044.4)
For centuries the Egyptians placed their faith in tombs as the safeguard of the body and of consequent pleasurable survival after death. The later evolution of magical practices, while burdensome to life from the cradle to the grave, most effectually delivered them from the religion of the tombs. The priests would inscribe the coffins with charm texts which were believed to be protection against a “man’s having his heart taken away from him in the nether world.” Presently a diverse assortment of these magical texts was collected and preserved as The Book of the Dead. But in the Nile valley magical ritual early became involved with the realms of conscience and character to a degree not often attained by the rituals of those days. And subsequently these ethical and moral ideals, rather than elaborate tombs, were depended upon for salvation.
95:2.6 (1044.5)
The superstitions of these times are well illustrated by the general belief in the efficacy of spittle as a healing agent, an idea which had its origin in Egypt and spread therefrom to Arabia and Mesopotamia. In the legendary battle of Horus with Set the young god lost his eye, but after Set was vanquished, this eye was restored by the wise god Thoth, who spat upon the wound and healed it.
95:2.7 (1044.6)
The Egyptians long believed that the stars twinkling in the night sky represented the survival of the souls of the worthy dead; other survivors they thought were absorbed into the sun. During a certain period, solar veneration became a species of ancestor worship. The sloping entrance passage of the great pyramid pointed directly toward the Pole Star so that the soul of the king, when emerging from the tomb, could go straight to the stationary and established constellations of the fixed stars, the supposed abode of the kings.
95:2.8 (1045.1)
When the oblique rays of the sun were observed penetrating earthward through an aperture in the clouds, it was believed that they betokened the letting down of a celestial stairway whereon the king and other righteous souls might ascend. “King Pepi has put down his radiance as a stairway under his feet whereon to ascend to his mother.”
멜기세덱이 육신을 입고 나타났을 때, 이집트인은 주변 민족들보다 훨씬 뛰어난 종교를 소유했다. 그들은, 육체에서 분리된 혼이 마술 처방으로 알맞게 무장된다면, 방해하는 악한 영들을 피할 수 있고, 오시리스의 재판실로 갈 수 있고, 거기서 “살인, 약탈, 거짓말, 간음, 도둑질, 이기심{利己心}”과는 상관없다고 판명되면, 복된 세계로 받아들여질 것이라고 믿었다. 이 혼이 저울에 달아서 모자란다고 판명되면 지옥으로 간다고, 즉 삼키는 여신에게 맡겨진다고 믿었다. 그리고 이것은, 주변에 있는 여러 민족의 믿음과 비교할 때, 미래의 생애에 대한 비교적 진보된 개념이었다.
95:2.9 (1045.2)
When Melchizedek appeared in the flesh, the Egyptians had a religion far above that of the surrounding peoples. They believed that a disembodied soul, if properly armed with magic formulas, could evade the intervening evil spirits and make its way to the judgment hall of Osiris, where, if innocent of “murder, robbery, falsehood, adultery, theft, and selfishness,” it would be admitted to the realms of bliss. If this soul were weighed in the balances and found wanting, it would be consigned to hell, to the Devouress. And this was, relatively, an advanced concept of a future life in comparison with the beliefs of many surrounding peoples.
95:3.1 (1045.4)
Although the culture and religion of Egypt were chiefly derived from Andite Mesopotamia and largely transmitted to subsequent civilizations through the Hebrews and Greeks, much, very much, of the social and ethical idealism of the Egyptians arose in the valley of the Nile as a purely evolutionary development. Notwithstanding the importation of much truth and culture of Andite origin, there evolved in Egypt more of moral culture as a purely human development than appeared by similar natural techniques in any other circumscribed area prior to the bestowal of Michael.
95:3.2 (1045.5)
Moral evolution is not wholly dependent on revelation. High moral concepts can be derived from man’s own experience. Man can even evolve spiritual values and derive cosmic insight from his personal experiential living because a divine spirit indwells him. Such natural evolutions of conscience and character were also augmented by the periodic arrival of teachers of truth, in ancient times from the second Eden, later on from Melchizedek’s headquarters at Salem.
살렘 복음이 이집트로 들어가기 수천 년 전에, 이집트에서는 도덕적인 지도자들이, 공의와 공평과 탐욕회피 등을 가르쳤다. 히브리인 경전이 기록되기 3천 년 전에, 이집트인의 금언{金言}은 이랬다:“정의를 표준으로 삼는 사람;그 길을 따라서 걷는 사람이 출세한다.” 그들은 친절함과 중용과 분별력을 가르쳤다. 이 시기에 위대했던 선생들 가운데 한 사람의 메시지는:“바르게 행하고 모든 것을 정당하게 대하라”는 것이었다. 이 시대에 이집트인의 세 가지 척도는, 진리-응보-정의였다. 순전히 인간적인 모든 유란시아 종교 중에서, 나일 강 유역에 한때 있었던 이런 인본주의에 나타난, 사회적 이상{理想}과 도덕적 위엄을 능가할 만한 것은 하나도 없었다.
95:3.3 (1045.6)
Thousands of years before the Salem gospel penetrated to Egypt, its moral leaders taught justice, fairness, and the avoidance of avarice. Three thousand years before the Hebrew scriptures were written, the motto of the Egyptians was: “Established is the man whose standard is righteousness; who walks according to its way.” They taught gentleness, moderation, and discretion. The message of one of the great teachers of this epoch was: “Do right and deal justly with all.” The Egyptian triad of this age was Truth-Justice-Righteousness. Of all the purely human religions of Urantia none ever surpassed the social ideals and the moral grandeur of this onetime humanism of the Nile valley.
95:3.4 (1045.7)
In the soil of these evolving ethical ideas and moral ideals the surviving doctrines of the Salem religion flourished. The concepts of good and evil found ready response in the hearts of a people who believed that “Life is given to the peaceful and death to the guilty.” “The peaceful is he who does what is loved; the guilty is he who does what is hated.” For centuries the inhabitants of the Nile valley had lived by these emerging ethical and social standards before they ever entertained the later concepts of right and wrong—good and bad.
이집트는, 지적이고 도덕적이었지만 그렇게 영적이지는 못했다. 6천 년 동안에 겨우 네 명의 위대한 선지자가 이집트인 가운데서 출현했다. 그들은 아메네몹을 한동안 따랐으며;오크반을 죽였으며;이크나톤을 짧은 한 세대 동안 마지못해서 인정했으나;모세를 거절했다. 다시 말해서, 유일하신 하나님을 전하는 살렘 교훈을 위해, 아브라함이, 그리고 후대에는 요셉이, 엄청난 영향력을 이집트 전역에 쉽게 행사할 수 있도록 만든 것은, 종교 상황보다 정치 상황이었다. 그러나 처음 이집트에 들어갔을 때 살렘 선교사들은, 메소포타미아에서 온 이주민의 변경된 도덕 표준과 혼합되어 진화된, 상당히 윤리적인 이 문화를 접했다. 나일 강 유역의 이 초기 선생들은, 양심이 하나님의 명령 곧 신격의 음성이라고 처음으로 선포한 사람이었다.
95:3.5 (1046.1)
Egypt was intellectual and moral but not overly spiritual. In six thousand years only four great prophets arose among the Egyptians. Amenemope they followed for a season; Okhban they murdered; Ikhnaton they accepted but halfheartedly for one short generation; Moses they rejected. Again was it political rather than religious circumstances that made it easy for Abraham and, later on, for Joseph to exert great influence throughout Egypt in behalf of the Salem teachings of one God. But when the Salem missionaries first entered Egypt, they encountered this highly ethical culture of evolution blended with the modified moral standards of Mesopotamian immigrants. These early Nile valley teachers were the first to proclaim conscience as the mandate of God, the voice of Deity.
95:4.1 (1046.2)
In due time there grew up in Egypt a teacher called by many the “son of man” and by others Amenemope. This seer exalted conscience to its highest pinnacle of arbitrament between right and wrong, taught punishment for sin, and proclaimed salvation through calling upon the solar deity.
아메네몹은, 부유함과 행운은 하나님의 선물이라고 가르쳤으며, 이 개념은 나중에 나타난 히브리인 사상에 속속들이 영향을 미쳤다. 고귀한 이 선생은, 하나님을-인식{認識}하는 것이 모든 행위에서 결정적 요소라고 믿었으며;하나님이 현존하심을 매 순간 깨달으면서, 그리고 그에 대한 책무를 다 하면서 살아야한다고 믿었다. 이 현자{賢者}의 교훈은 그후에 히브리어로 번역됐고, 구약 성경이 축소되어 기록되기 훨씬 전에 그 민족의 신성시되는 책이 됐다. 이 선한 사람의 주요 훈계는, 위탁된 정부의 직책을 수행하면서 정직하고 성실할 것을 아들에게 훈계하는 일과 관련됐으며, 먼 옛날의 이런 고상한 정서는 현대의 어떤 정치가에게든지 명예가 될 것이다.
95:4.2 (1046.3)
Amenemope taught that riches and fortune were the gift of God, and this concept thoroughly colored the later appearing Hebrew philosophy. This noble teacher believed that God-consciousness was the determining factor in all conduct; that every moment should be lived in the realization of the presence of, and responsibility to, God. The teachings of this sage were subsequently translated into Hebrew and became the sacred book of that people long before the Old Testament was reduced to writing. The chief preachment of this good man had to do with instructing his son in uprightness and honesty in governmental positions of trust, and these noble sentiments of long ago would do honor to any modern statesman.
나일 강에 있던 이 현자는, “재물에는 날개가 있어서 날아가 버린다”--곧 이 세상의 모든 것은 덧없다--고 가르쳤다. 그의 위대한 기도는 “두려움에서 벗어나게 되는” 것이었다. 그는 모든 사람에게, “사람의 말”에서 돌이켜, “하나님의 행동”으로 향하라고 훈계했다. 물질에 대해서는:사람이 소유하지만 하나님이 나눠주신다고 가르쳤다. 그의 교훈은 히브리어로 번역됐고, 구약 성경에서 잠언의 사상을 결정지었다. 이것은 그리스어로 번역됨으로써 차후에 헬라의 모든 종교 철학을 그럴싸하게 꾸몄다. 후대 알렉산드리아 철학자 필로는 그 지혜서 사본{寫本}을 갖고 있었다.
95:4.3 (1046.4)
This wise man of the Nile taught that “riches take themselves wings and fly away”—that all things earthly are evanescent. His great prayer was to be “saved from fear.” He exhorted all to turn away from “the words of men” to “the acts of God.” In substance he taught: Man proposes but God disposes. His teachings, translated into Hebrew, determined the philosophy of the Old Testament Book of Proverbs. Translated into Greek, they gave color to all subsequent Hellenic religious philosophy. The later Alexandrian philosopher, Philo, possessed a copy of the Book of Wisdom.
95:4.4 (1046.5)
Amenemope functioned to conserve the ethics of evolution and the morals of revelation and in his writings passed them on both to the Hebrews and to the Greeks. He was not the greatest of the religious teachers of this age, but he was the most influential in that he colored the subsequent thought of two vital links in the growth of Occidental civilization—the Hebrews, among whom evolved the acme of Occidental religious faith, and the Greeks, who developed pure philosophic thought to its greatest European heights.
95:4.5 (1046.6)
In the Book of Hebrew Proverbs, chapters fifteen, seventeen, twenty, and chapter twenty-two, verse seventeen, to chapter twenty-four, verse twenty-two, are taken almost verbatim from Amenemope’s Book of Wisdom. The first psalm of the Hebrew Book of Psalms was written by Amenemope and is the heart of the teachings of Ikhnaton.
95:5.1 (1047.1)
The teachings of Amenemope were slowly losing their hold on the Egyptian mind when, through the influence of an Egyptian Salemite physician, a woman of the royal family espoused the Melchizedek teachings. This woman prevailed upon her son, Ikhnaton, Pharaoh of Egypt, to accept these doctrines of One God.
육신을 입은 멜기세덱이 사라진 후에, 그때까지 어떤 사람도 이크나톤만큼 계시된 살렘 종교 개념을 그토록 놀라울 정도로 분명하게 간직하지는 못했다. 어떤 면에서, 이 젊은 이집트인 왕은 인류 역사상 가장 비범한 사람 가운데 하나다. 메소포타미아에서 영적 쇠퇴가 증대되던 이 시기 동안에, 그는 이집트에서 엘 엘리온 곧 유일하신 하나님 교리를 존속시켰고, 이처럼 철학적 일신교의 경로를 유지했으며, 이것은 당시에, 장차 미가엘의 증여를 위한 종교적 배경에 지극히 중요했다. 그리고 여러 다른 이유 중에서도, 이런 업적이 인정됐기 때문에, 아기 예수를 이집트로 데려가게 했고, 거기서 이크나톤의 영적 후계자 가운데 일부가 그를 만나고, 유란시아에 대한 그의 신성한 사명의 어떤 국면을 어느 정도 이해할 수 있게 했다.
95:5.2 (1047.2)
Since the disappearance of Melchizedek in the flesh, no human being up to that time had possessed such an amazingly clear concept of the revealed religion of Salem as Ikhnaton. In some respects this young Egyptian king is one of the most remarkable persons in human history. During this time of increasing spiritual depression in Mesopotamia, he kept alive the doctrine of El Elyon, the One God, in Egypt, thus maintaining the philosophic monotheistic channel which was vital to the religious background of the then future bestowal of Michael. And it was in recognition of this exploit, among other reasons, that the child Jesus was taken to Egypt, where some of the spiritual successors of Ikhnaton saw him and to some extent understood certain phases of his divine mission to Urantia.
95:5.3 (1047.3)
Moses, the greatest character between Melchizedek and Jesus, was the joint gift to the world of the Hebrew race and the Egyptian royal family; and had Ikhnaton possessed the versatility and ability of Moses, had he manifested a political genius to match his surprising religious leadership, then would Egypt have become the great monotheistic nation of that age; and if this had happened, it is barely possible that Jesus might have lived the greater portion of his mortal life in Egypt.
전체 역사에서 어떤 왕도, 이 비범한 이크나톤이 한 것처럼, 국가 전체를 다신교에서 일신교로 옮겨가는 일을 그토록 조직적으로 진행시키지는 못했다. 이 젊은 왕은 가장 놀랄만한 결단력으로 과거를 청산했는데, 자기 이름을 바꾸고, 수도를 떠나고, 한결같이 새로운 도시를 건설하고, 전체 민족을 위하여 새 예술과 문학을 창출했다. 그러나 그는 너무 서둘렀으며;그가 죽은 후에도 유지될 수 있는 것보다 너무 많은 것을 설립했다. 다시 말해서, 그는 자기 민족의 물질적 안정과 번영을 마련하기에 실패했는데, 나중에 역경과 고난이 이집트인에게 몰려왔을 때, 이 모든 것이 그의 종교 교훈에 불리하게 반응했다.
95:5.4 (1047.4)
Never in all history did any king so methodically proceed to swing a whole nation from polytheism to monotheism as did this extraordinary Ikhnaton. With the most amazing determination this young ruler broke with the past, changed his name, abandoned his capital, built an entirely new city, and created a new art and literature for a whole people. But he went too fast; he built too much, more than could stand when he had gone. Again, he failed to provide for the material stability and prosperity of his people, all of which reacted unfavorably against his religious teachings when the subsequent floods of adversity and oppression swept over the Egyptians.
95:5.5 (1047.5)
Had this man of amazingly clear vision and extraordinary singleness of purpose had the political sagacity of Moses, he would have changed the whole history of the evolution of religion and the revelation of truth in the Occidental world. During his lifetime he was able to curb the activities of the priests, whom he generally discredited, but they maintained their cults in secret and sprang into action as soon as the young king passed from power; and they were not slow to connect all of Egypt’s subsequent troubles with the establishment of monotheism during his reign.
95:5.6 (1047.6)
Very wisely Ikhnaton sought to establish monotheism under the guise of the sun-god. This decision to approach the worship of the Universal Father by absorbing all gods into the worship of the sun was due to the counsel of the Salemite physician. Ikhnaton took the generalized doctrines of the then existent Aton faith regarding the fatherhood and motherhood of Deity and created a religion which recognized an intimate worshipful relation between man and God.
95:5.7 (1048.1)
Ikhnaton was wise enough to maintain the outward worship of Aton, the sun-god, while he led his associates in the disguised worship of the One God, creator of Aton and supreme Father of all. This young teacher-king was a prolific writer, being author of the exposition entitled “The One God,” a book of thirty-one chapters, which the priests, when returned to power, utterly destroyed. Ikhnaton also wrote one hundred and thirty-seven hymns, twelve of which are now preserved in the Old Testament Book of Psalms, credited to Hebrew authorship.
이크나톤의 종교가 일상생활에 대하여 주는 최고의 말씀은 “정의”였으며, 그는 옳게 행하는 개념을 신속하게 확장시켜서, 국가의 윤리뿐 아니라 국제 윤리까지 포함시켰다. 이 세대는 놀라울 정도로 개인적인 경건성을 보였고, 지성 있는 더 많은 남녀 가운데서는, 하나님을 발견하고 그를 알고자 하는 참된 염원이 특징을 이뤘다. 그 시대에는 사회적 지위가 높거나 재산이 많은 것은, 어떤 이집트인에게든지 율법 앞에서 전혀 특혜를 주지 않았다. 이집트의 가족생활은, 도덕 문화를 보존하고 육성하는 데 많이 이바지했고, 후대에 팔레스틴에서 유대인의 뛰어난 가족생활에 감화를 줬다.
95:5.8 (1048.2)
The supreme word of Ikhnaton’s religion in daily life was “righteousness,” and he rapidly expanded the concept of right doing to embrace international as well as national ethics. This was a generation of amazing personal piety and was characterized by a genuine aspiration among the more intelligent men and women to find God and to know him. In those days social position or wealth gave no Egyptian any advantage in the eyes of the law. The family life of Egypt did much to preserve and augment moral culture and was the inspiration of the later superb family life of the Jews in Palestine.
이크나톤이 제시한 복음의 치명적 결점은, 거기에 담긴 가장 위대한 진리, 즉 아톤이 이집트뿐 아니라 또한 “온 세계, 사람과 짐승, 및 이 이집트 땅 외에 모든 이방 나라, 심지어 시리아와 쿠시도 창조하신 분이며, 그가 만물을 제 자리에 두고 만물의 필요를 채워주신다”는 가르침이었다. 이런 신격 개념은 고상하고 숭고했으나, 민족 개념은 아니었다. 그런 국제 종교를 가졌다는 감상은, 전쟁터에서 이집트 군인의 사기를 높여주지 못한 반면, 젊은 왕과 그의 새 종교에 대항할 수 있는 효과적인 무기를 사제들에게 마련해줬다. 그는 후대 히브리인보다 훨씬 뛰어난 신격 개념을 지녔지만, 국가를 세우는 자의 목적에 소용되기에는 너무 앞선 것이었다.
95:5.9 (1048.3)
The fatal weakness of Ikhnaton’s gospel was its greatest truth, the teaching that Aton was not only the creator of Egypt but also of the “whole world, man and beasts, and all the foreign lands, even Syria and Kush, besides this land of Egypt. He sets all in their place and provides all with their needs.” These concepts of Deity were high and exalted, but they were not nationalistic. Such sentiments of internationality in religion failed to augment the morale of the Egyptian army on the battlefield, while they provided effective weapons for the priests to use against the young king and his new religion. He had a Deity concept far above that of the later Hebrews, but it was too advanced to serve the purposes of a nation builder.
95:5.10 (1048.4)
Though the monotheistic ideal suffered with the passing of Ikhnaton, the idea of one God persisted in the minds of many groups. The son-in-law of Ikhnaton went along with the priests, back to the worship of the old gods, changing his name to Tutankhamen. The capital returned to Thebes, and the priests waxed fat upon the land, eventually gaining possession of one seventh of all Egypt; and presently one of this same order of priests made bold to seize the crown.
그러나 사제들이 일신교 물결을 충분히 이길 수는 없었다. 그들은 점차 자기 신들을 합병시키고 연결시킬 수밖에 없었으며;신들의 계통은 점점 축소됐다. 이크나톤은 하늘의 불타는 원반을 창조자 하나님과 관련시켰고, 이 관념은 젊은 개혁자가 죽고 한참 지난 후에도, 사람의 마음, 심지어 사제들의 마음 속에서 계속 불타올랐다. 일신교 개념은 이집트인의 마음 속에서 그리고 세계에서 사라진 적이 없었다. 그것은 바로 그 신성한 아버지, 즉 이크나톤이 모든 이집트인으로 하여금 경배하도록 그토록 열광적으로 전파했던, 유일하신 하나님의 창조주 아들이 등장할 때까지도 존속했다.
95:5.11 (1048.5)
But the priests could not fully overcome the monotheistic wave. Increasingly they were compelled to combine and hyphenate their gods; more and more the family of gods contracted. Ikhnaton had associated the flaming disc of the heavens with the creator God, and this idea continued to flame up in the hearts of men, even of the priests, long after the young reformer had passed on. Never did the concept of monotheism die out of the hearts of men in Egypt and in the world. It persisted even to the arrival of the Creator Son of that same divine Father, the one God whom Ikhnaton had so zealously proclaimed for the worship of all Egypt.
95:5.12 (1048.6)
The weakness of Ikhnaton’s doctrine lay in the fact that he proposed such an advanced religion that only the educated Egyptians could fully comprehend his teachings. The rank and file of the agricultural laborers never really grasped his gospel and were, therefore, ready to return with the priests to the old-time worship of Isis and her consort Osiris, who was supposed to have been miraculously resurrected from a cruel death at the hands of Set, the god of darkness and evil.
95:5.13 (1049.1)
The teaching of immortality for all men was too advanced for the Egyptians. Only kings and the rich were promised a resurrection; therefore did they so carefully embalm and preserve their bodies in tombs against the day of judgment. But the democracy of salvation and resurrection as taught by Ikhnaton eventually prevailed, even to the extent that the Egyptians later believed in the survival of dumb animals.
95:5.14 (1049.2)
Although the effort of this Egyptian ruler to impose the worship of one God upon his people appeared to fail, it should be recorded that the repercussions of his work persisted for centuries both in Palestine and Greece, and that Egypt thus became the agent for transmitting the combined evolutionary culture of the Nile and the revelatory religion of the Euphrates to all of the subsequent peoples of the Occident.
95:5.15 (1049.3)
The glory of this great era of moral development and spiritual growth in the Nile valley was rapidly passing at about the time the national life of the Hebrews was beginning, and consequent upon their sojourn in Egypt these Bedouins carried away much of these teachings and perpetuated many of Ikhnaton’s doctrines in their racial religion.
95:6.1 (1049.4)
From Palestine some of the Melchizedek missionaries passed on through Mesopotamia and to the great Iranian plateau. For more than five hundred years the Salem teachers made headway in Iran, and the whole nation was swinging to the Melchizedek religion when a change of rulers precipitated a bitter persecution which practically ended the monotheistic teachings of the Salem cult. The doctrine of the Abrahamic covenant was virtually extinct in Persia when, in that great century of moral renaissance, the sixth before Christ, Zoroaster appeared to revive the smouldering embers of the Salem gospel.
이 새 종교 창시자는 모험심 강한 씩씩한 젊은이였는데, 메소포타미아의 우르에 처음 순례하러 갔다가, --다른 여러 가지 전승과 함께-- 캘리개스챠와 루시퍼 반역에 관한 전승을 배우게 됐고, 이 모든 것이 그의 종교 본성을 강하게 자극했다. 따라서, 그는 우르에 있을 때 꾼 꿈의 영향을 받아, 북부 지역의 고향으로 돌아가서 자기 민족의 종교를 개편하는 일에 착수하는 계획표를 확정했다. 그는 응보의 하나님이라는 히브리인의 관념 곧 모세의 신성 개념을 흡수했다. 최상의 하나님 관념이 그의 정신 속에 분명히 있었고, 다른 모든 신을 마귀로 격하시켰는데, 그가 메소포타미아에서 들었던 여러 귀신 등급으로 몰아넣었다. 그는 일곱 으뜸 영에 관한 우르에 남아있던 이야기를 배웠으며, 그리하여 일곱 최고 신 무리를 만들면서, 아후라-마즈다를 그 꼭대기에 뒀다. 그는 이런 하위{下位} 신들을, 정의의 율법, 선한 사고{思考}, 고귀한 정부, 거룩한 성품, 건강, 및 불멸성을 이상화한 것과 관련시켰다.
95:6.2 (1049.5)
This founder of a new religion was a virile and adventurous youth, who, on his first pilgrimage to Ur in Mesopotamia, had learned of the traditions of the Caligastia and the Lucifer rebellion—along with many other traditions—all of which had made a strong appeal to his religious nature. Accordingly, as the result of a dream while in Ur, he settled upon a program of returning to his northern home to undertake the remodeling of the religion of his people. He had imbibed the Hebraic idea of a God of justice, the Mosaic concept of divinity. The idea of a supreme God was clear in his mind, and he set down all other gods as devils, consigned them to the ranks of the demons of which he had heard in Mesopotamia. He had learned of the story of the Seven Master Spirits as the tradition lingered in Ur, and, accordingly, he created a galaxy of seven supreme gods with Ahura-Mazda at its head. These subordinate gods he associated with the idealization of Right Law, Good Thought, Noble Government, Holy Character, Health, and Immortality.
95:6.4 (1049.7)
Zoroaster did not teach the worship of fire but sought to utilize the flame as a symbol of the pure and wise Spirit of universal and supreme dominance. (All too true, his later followers did both reverence and worship this symbolic fire.) Finally, upon the conversion of an Iranian prince, this new religion was spread by the sword. And Zoroaster heroically died in battle for that which he believed was the “truth of the Lord of light.”
95:6.5 (1050.1)
Zoroastrianism is the only Urantian creed that perpetuates the Dalamatian and Edenic teachings about the Seven Master Spirits. While failing to evolve the Trinity concept, it did in a certain way approach that of God the Sevenfold. Original Zoroastrianism was not a pure dualism; though the early teachings did picture evil as a time co-ordinate of goodness, it was definitely eternity-submerged in the ultimate reality of the good. Only in later times did the belief gain credence that good and evil contended on equal terms.
95:6.6 (1050.2)
The Jewish traditions of heaven and hell and the doctrine of devils as recorded in the Hebrew scriptures, while founded on the lingering traditions of Lucifer and Caligastia, were principally derived from the Zoroastrians during the times when the Jews were under the political and cultural dominance of the Persians. Zoroaster, like the Egyptians, taught the “day of judgment,” but he connected this event with the end of the world.
95:6.7 (1050.3)
Even the religion which succeeded Zoroastrianism in Persia was markedly influenced by it. When the Iranian priests sought to overthrow the teachings of Zoroaster, they resurrected the ancient worship of Mithra. And Mithraism spread throughout the Levant and Mediterranean regions, being for some time a contemporary of both Judaism and Christianity. The teachings of Zoroaster thus came successively to impress three great religions: Judaism and Christianity and, through them, Mohammedanism.
95:7.1 (1050.6)
The Melchizedek teachings of the one God became established in the Arabian Desert at a comparatively recent date. As in Greece, so in Arabia the Salem missionaries failed because of their misunderstanding of Machiventa’s instructions regarding overorganization. But they were not thus hindered by their interpretation of his admonition against all efforts to extend the gospel through military force or civil compulsion.
멜기세덱의 교훈이, 심지어 중국이나 로마에서도, 바로 그 살렘에 무척 가까이 위치한 이 사막 지역보다 더 철저하게 실패하지는 않았다. 동양과 서양에서 민족들 대다수가, 각자 불교도와 그리스도교인이 된 지 오랜 세월이 지났을 때, 아라비아 사막은 마치 수천 년 전 상태가 계속되는 듯했다. 각 부족은 옛 주물을 숭배했고, 많은 독립 가정들이 자기네 가신{家神}을 섬겼다. 바벨론의 이쉬타르, 히브리인의 야훼, 이란의 아후라, 그리고 그리스도교의 주 예수 그리스도의 아버지 사이에서, 갈등이 오랫동안 계속됐다. 어떤 한 개념이 결코 다른 개념들을 충분하게 대체할 수 없었다.
95:7.2 (1050.7)
Not even in China or Rome did the Melchizedek teachings fail more completely than in this desert region so very near Salem itself. Long after the majority of the peoples of the Orient and Occident had become respectively Buddhist and Christian, the desert of Arabia continued as it had for thousands of years. Each tribe worshiped its olden fetish, and many individual families had their own household gods. Long the struggle continued between Babylonian Ishtar, Hebrew Yahweh, Iranian Ahura, and Christian Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. Never was one concept able fully to displace the others.
유일하신 하나님에 대한 어렴풋한 관념을 고수하는 가족과 씨족들이, 아라비아 전역 여기저기에 있었다. 그런 무리들은, 멜기세덱과 아브라함과 모세 및 조로아스터에 관한 전승을 소중히 간직했다. 예수가-전한 복음에 반응했을지도 모를 수많은 중심지가 있었지만, 지중해 지역의 나라들에서 선교사 역할을 했던 사람들의 타협적이고 혁신적인 태도와 비교할 때, 사막 지역의 그리스도교 선교사는 엄격하고 완고한 집단이었다. 예수를 따르는 자들이, “온 세상으로 가서 복음을 전하라”는 그의 권면을 더 심각하게 받아들이고, 더 호의적으로 복음을 전파하고, 그들 자신이 궁리한 부수적인 사회 요구조건을 덜 까다롭게 했더라면, 아라비아를 포함하여 많은 지역이, 그 목수의 아들의 단순한 복음을 기꺼이 받아들였을 것이다.
95:7.3 (1051.1)
Here and there throughout Arabia were families and clans that held on to the hazy idea of the one God. Such groups treasured the traditions of Melchizedek, Abraham, Moses, and Zoroaster. There were numerous centers that might have responded to the Jesusonian gospel, but the Christian missionaries of the desert lands were an austere and unyielding group in contrast with the compromisers and innovators who functioned as missionaries in the Mediterranean countries. Had the followers of Jesus taken more seriously his injunction to “go into all the world and preach the gospel,” and had they been more gracious in that preaching, less stringent in collateral social requirements of their own devising, then many lands would gladly have received the simple gospel of the carpenter’s son, Arabia among them.
95:7.5 (1051.3)
There was only one factor of a tribal, racial, or national nature about the primitive and unorganized beliefs of the desert, and that was the peculiar and general respect which almost all Arabian tribes were willing to pay to a certain black stone fetish in a certain temple at Mecca. This point of common contact and reverence subsequently led to the establishment of the Islamic religion. What Yahweh, the volcano spirit, was to the Jewish Semites, the Kaaba stone became to their Arabic cousins.
이슬람의 장점은, 오직 유일한 신격인 알라를 선명하고 뚜렷하게 소개한 것이었으며;약점은, 여자를 격하시킨 점과 함께, 군사적 힘을 종교 보급에 관련시킨 것이었다. 그러나 이슬람은, 만유의 유일한 우주 신격을 확고부동하게 끊임없이 제시해왔는데, “그는 보이지 않는 존재와 보이는 존재를 아시는 분이다. 그는 자비롭고 인정 많으신 분이다.” “하나님은 참으로 모든 인류에게 풍성한 선을 베푸신다.” “그리고 내가 아플 때 그분이 나를 고쳐주신다.” “세 사람이 같이 이야기할 때에는 언제든지, 하나님께서 넷째 존재로 계시는데,” 그분이 “처음이요 나중이고, 또한 보이는 분일뿐 아니라 숨어 계시는 분”이기 때문 아닌가?
95:7.6 (1051.4)
The strength of Islam has been its clear-cut and well-defined presentation of Allah as the one and only Deity; its weakness, the association of military force with its promulgation, together with its degradation of woman. But it has steadfastly held to its presentation of the One Universal Deity of all, “who knows the invisible and the visible. He is the merciful and the compassionate.” “Truly God is plenteous in goodness to all men.” “And when I am sick, it is he who heals me.” “For whenever as many as three speak together, God is present as a fourth,” for is he not “the first and the last, also the seen and the hidden”?