Commissioned by God: True and Parody
Koot van Wyk (Dlitt et Phil; ThD)
Heat
will not be in heaven, Christ says through John in Revelation 7:16 “neither
shall the sun light on them nor any heat”. With a week of unprecedented
tempatures of heat and 65 people dying in Japan because of heatwaves, one can
be glad that heaven will not have heat. It
was in the heat of 1450 BCE at the age of 40 that Moses was looking for shade
in Midian. A bush was suddenly on fire and he wanted to see. God saw him coming
and told him not to come close. It was the beginning of his commission to lead
the people out of Egypt. Moses was in touch with the “Invisible” and rejected
the umbrella of safety and glory of Egypt for his religion, says Hebrews
11:24-27. Exodus
3:2-8 recorded Moses meeting with God. God’s message to Moses is that he must
not look at God or try to look at God. It
was in the heat of the desert around the Sphinx in 1420-1418 BCE that Thutmosis
IV, the grandson of the Napoleon of Egypt who died in the Red Sea at the Exodus
of Israel from Egypt in 1450 that fateful March, that he was looking for some
shade. Thut IV found shade as a young teenager next to the Sphinx. He fell
asleep and dreamed that the god appeared to him and asked him to look at him.
So different from Moses. He also wanted to make him a glorious king of Egypt.
His complaint was that dust and sand is covering the Sphinx and that it is in
need of cleaning. What
Thut IV was doing is to take the famous history of Moses thirty years later,
which he also heard about, and to make a parody of it fitting his own calling.
All that God said to Moses that he will do with them and with him, Thut IV
turned around and said the god want to do with him, not leaving Egypt. The true
calling and the fake parody. The recasting of the true. But not the true. A
non-existent fake god spoke to Thut IV in the dream. Jesus
appeared to the disciples in Matthew 28:16-20. He promised that He will be with
them until the end of time. What he commissioned them to do is to teach
everything He taught and commanded. What did He teach? What did He commanded?
He taught the whole Bible revealing Himself and the work of the Trinity. So the
fake will be an attempt to have Christ without doctrines. Just Christ, no
doctrines. “Teach them and baptise them” said Christ in this great commission.
But what will be the fake? Baptise them as babies while they know nothing and
inted to teach them many years later. What a recasting of the commission of
Christ.
Source: Koot van Wyk, A Commentary on
Archaeological Elements in the Book of Judges. Doctor of Theology dissertation,
Rikkyo University, Tokyo, 2008, pages 113-115 Extract from dissertation. . . . I46 Thutmosis IV
Sphinx Stela (lines 8-13) Source: Kasia Szpakowska 2003
Transliterations Transliteration and Translation wʿ m
nn hr.w ḫpr.wt
pw jrj.n s3-nzw Djḥwtj-ms ḥr
stwt one of these days it happened that was
son of king Thutmosis strolling ḥr tr nj mtr.t pw jr(w).n=f n šw.t n.t nṯr
pn ʿ3 he relaxed in the shadow of god this
great (one) jṯj.n
sw ʿ.wy
nqdd m 3.t rʿ m
wp.t overcame him sleep and slumber at the
moment the sun was at zenith. (9) gm.n=f ḥm
nj nṯr
pn šps ḥr
md.t m r3=f ḏs=f
mj-qd he found the majesty of this god
venerable speaking from his mouth his own like jtj=f ḫr
s3=f m ḏd his father to his son saying m33 wj rk dgj wj rk s3=j Ḏḥwtj-ms look at me gaze at me my son Thutmosis jnk jtj=k Ḥr-m-3ḫ.t-Ḫprj-Rʿ-Tm I am your father Horem
Akhet-khepri-ra-atum. dj(=f) n=k nzw.t=j (10) [tp t3=j ḫn.t
ʿnḫ.w I shall give to you my kingship upon
my land the head of the living jw]=k wṯs ḥḏ.t=s
n.t=s ḥr
s.t Gb rpʿ.t you shall carry its white crown, its
red crown upon the seat of Geb the heir. jw n=k t3 m 3w=f wsḫ=f
s:ḥḏ.t
3ḫ.t
Nb-ḏr shall belong to you the land in its
lenghth and its breadth that which illuminates the eye of the lord of all ḏf3.w ḫr=k
nw ḫnw
t3.wy provisions to you from within the two
lands jn.w ʿ3
nj ḫ3s.wt
nb gifts great from foreign lands, all ʿḥʿ.w
nw tr ʿ3 m
rnp.t a lifetime of time great in years jw ḥr=j
n=k jb=j n=k jw=k n=j belongs my face to you my heart to
you, you to me (11) [mk sḫr=j
mj wnn m šnw ḥʿ.w=j
nb stp] [behold my condition is like one
suffering my limbs (all) are ruined ḥsj wj šʿ.w
nj ḥ3s.wt
t3 wn.t.n=j ḥr=s faces me the sand of desert land upon
which I used to be sjn.n=j r rdj.t jrj=k ntt wn m jb=j I have waited it is in order to cause
that you do what is in my heart rḫ=kw
r-ḏd
ntk s3=j nḏ.t=j for I know it is said to you my son my
savior s3ḥ rk arrive behold mk wj ḥnʿ=k I am together with you jnk (12) [sšm=k I am [your guide sʿrq
md.t tn completed this speech wn.jn s3-nzw pn gg.w n sḏ]m=f
[nn...............ḏr stared son of the king this, he heard
this speech rḫ.n=f
md.t nṯr
pn he understood the words of this god rdj.n=f gr] m [jb=f] he placed silence in his mouth Van Wyk notes: I47 There are
strong parallels between the encounter that Moses had in the wilderness of
Midian with the Lord in Exodus 3 in 1450 BCE and this encounter that Thutmosis
IV had with his god, the Sphinx in 1420-1418 BCE. There are enormous
differences: 1. The Lord of Moses is the savior not
Moses. Thutmosis IV is called Savior of the god. 2. In both cases it is said that the
Lord will be with Moses and the god of Thutmosis IV is together with him. 3. Both the Lord and the god of the
dream of Thutmosis IV wanted their subjects to do what is in their hearts. 4. Moses is called to leadership and
Thutmosis IV is called to kingship. 5. The god wants Thutmosis IV to gaze
upon him but in the case of Moses he could not see the Lord and took of his
sandals. 6. A land is promised to Thutmosis IV
in similar vein as the Lord promised to Moses a land thirty years before. 7. In the case of Moses in 1450 BCE
the appearance was real and in a theophany. In the case of Thutmosis IV in
1420-1418 BCE the appearance of the god was in a dream. 8. It is almost that the calling of
Moses annals from 1450 BCE is plagarized by the scribe of Thutmosis
IV in 1420-1418 BCE. 9. In the light of what we know of the
calling of the upcoming leader Moses in 1450 BCE and what we
can see here 30 years later in the life of an upcoming new pharaoh, is that one
cannot miss the attempt to (probably for superstitious reasons) to mirror the same
events that gave the Israelites the victory of the pax-Egyptica in 1450 BCE, namely the
Lord in His theophany during Moses' calling, in the calling of Thutmosis IV to
be pharaoh. They probably reasoned that if
Thutmosis IV follows the same events that happened in the life of
the successful Moses in 1450 BCE, he would also have success in his
cause. That means, the priority of religion of the calling God is very
important. As Moses used the principle of equal distribution for all tribes of Israel,
so Thutmosis IV thought that he would use the same principle for taking care of
all the sanctuaries of Egypt. It was as if Thutmosis IV was taking Moses as his
role-model for success. 10. What we have here is a process of
simulation of popular world literature. Anyone who has studied Ptolemaic
Alexandria by P. M. Fraser (1972) in four volumes, will know that the
phenomenon of simulation of popular literature of the Umwelt, and the creation of
new literature on the basis of old frames or mirroring techniques that others
successfully used in the past, was common. We also know that Hittites translated
Sumerian and Babylonian
works into Hittite. A reworking of the
annals of Moses about his calling into a plagarized form applied to Thutmosis
IV in the dream stela is thus not such a farfetched idea. The iconography of
the pharaoh stepping on the enemies was plagiarized during this time by nearly
all pharaohs with attribution of the facts to themselves. The dream stela is
evidence of the same phenomenon, but from Israelite literature. The book of
Joshua says that the Exodus event was on all lips of the Levant.