One Influential Rabbi

Dr. Goldstein, rabbi in Port Arthur, was an unforgettable character.  Holder of five doctorates (Law, Philosophy, Medicine, Canon Law, History), a survivor of the Holocaust as a child, he had a love of life.  Rabbi Goldstein drove an enormously long, old, gold Chrysler, and was "fearless" about things like stop signs and such.

I met him when he brought a program to the Port Arthur Ministers Alliances with a provocative title:  "The Egyptian Roots of the Christian Communion."  In part, it was a summary of the Passover rituals, and their influence on Communion through the Last Supper setting.  But, in part, it was an exploration of Egyptian religion and its influence on the Hebrew Scriptures.  Like most folks, I was of a mind that there was little influence flowing from Egyptian to Hebrew.

Moses grew up and was educated as an an Egyptian nobleman.  He knew the law.  He knew what was called the Book of Courtesies, much of which is quoted in Proverbs.  And he knew another thing lost to us until after Napoleon's discovery of the Rosetta Stone:  Egyptian poetry.

The spiritual poetry, with so much reflection on the world of nature and the mysteries of the stars, just the simple wonder of a starry night, was lost for such a long time.  Each "new age" of rulers has always tended to erase the culture of the former dominant figures (just as the Spanish erased much of the Aztec and Inca cultures which they conquered.)  But Moses knew it all well.

Bit by bit, we discover treasures, all over again, from the ancients.  To slowly read ancient Egyptian poetry about the wonders of the created night sky, the magnificent gifts from the divine to the human, is to recognize that God has never hated any people, but revealed himself to those who seek him.

The key?  Once I stop looking at the ancient world as a "more modern" person, and see the products of those of another time who are my equal, history and history's God begin to open into an incredibly broad view.  God loves all his children.  Never told more profoundly than in Jesus Christ, but never left UN-told.

(To follow up on some interesting reading:  Awakening Osiris by Normandi Ellis, and The Hermetica by Freke and Gandy.)