A Racist Rant (for Jesus's Sake)

  

A carving in a pharaoh's tomb depicts

his kingdom's conquest of a people.

(Wikimedia.org photo)

The Persian diaspora is not God's gift to the world. We do not know what ethnic appearance Heaven gave Himself, living among peoples in Egypt as a baby and walking as an older child and adult among the Hebrew people (people chosen for longsuffering with faithfulness among them). 

But we do know the Hebrew people were taken into slavery more than once, as were people of the African diaspora for longer than anyone may ever know. And we know that "fruit of the Spirit" includes our capacity to endure suffering with patience, or includes our longsuffering.

We know that we as peoples who have long endured a world that leans to its own understanding, are peoples who have grown in faith. And we know that we, in Jesus today, have not had trouble-free lives, and that we are not in agreement with peoples who sacrifice children, who disparage or corrupt elders, who deny home as sanctuary, who try to go to Heaven based on how much we give, or who deny Jesus in furtherance of "one god."

We know that being persecuted for wanting to live safe in Jesus, and for asking others to do the same (for asking others to stop choosing bondage to their sins), is part of our suffering in these last days.

And we know a little about the suffering that went before us.

Although historians do not agree on what the slavery timeline was for the Hebrew people who went to Joseph (maybe pronounced something like Yo-seph?) in Egypt, some do think the Egyptian pharaoh who didn't know Joseph, the pharaoh who enslaved the Hebrews who were with Joseph in Egypt during a great famine, must have been the pharaoh Ramses II; but I am among people who well see why that can't be right, why Ramses II can't be who the Hebrews were in hard labor to.

Some scholars are set on Ramses II as the Pharaoh of the Bible, some others are confused about that history, and yet others have ideas of their own, ignoring the fact that both Kushite and Semitic people had been enslaved in Egypt for hundreds on hundreds of years before the Hebrew Joseph was sold to Egypt.

Egypt was a crossroads among nations. During the course of centuries, Egypt's kings and pharaohs were sometimes distinctly black, sometimes distinctly Asian, sometimes distinctly unknown in ethnic background, and were even Canaanite at one point while Egypt was falling apart. Then, eventually, after hundreds on hundreds of years, there was even a queen there of partly Greek heritage: Cleopatra — who has nothing to do with the ancient obelisks that the U.S. National Monument is patterned after, by the way. (In ignorance, folk, at some point, decided to give wrong names to ancient Egyptian obelisks that were erected at least a thousand years before Cleopatra, calling the sculptures Cleopatra's Needle and Obelisks of Cleopatra - as if Egypt's name is Cleopatra!)

Again, Egypt was a crossroads. A ruler from one ethnic group or another rose to power there at one time or another, over centuries, while all the while people such as those who were Hebrew, and those who were, on the other hand, Kushite or distinctly African, easily became slaves, regardless of whether a pharaoh, male or female, was ethnically Nubian, Asian, Greek, or Roman — and regardless of eventual Muslim conquest over Egypt.

Egypt was a place of conquest and idolatry, even during the rule of pharaohs that some today believe were admirable. Peoples who Egypt conquered were required to bring agricultural and other goods to Egypt, where, for centuries, slaves built storage bunkers made of straw and mud bricks.

When there were droughts, Egypt distributed, out of storage, to those conquered peoples who were subject to Egypt. Again, this went on for centuries.

But God had a plan.

A patriarch in the adoptive family line of the coming Messiah, Joseph was sold to Egypt by his jealous brothers. And God began speaking to Joseph in the Holy Spirit while Joseph was held captive.

Joseph was not a fortune teller. Fortune telling is not God's way. But God revealed to Joseph what was meant by a pharaoh's dream. The dream had troubled the pharaoh, and the pharaoh called on servants to tell him the meaning of the dream. One servant remembered Joseph and his God, and let the pharaoh know to bring Joseph out of prison to hear the dream.

With prayer, Joseph was able to tell the pharaoh that the dream meant a famine was coming, so the pharaoh did prepare. When Joseph's wisdom came to pass, the pharaoh removed Joseph from prison and gave him administrative responsibilities over Egypt's affairs. Then, during the famine, God sent Joseph's brothers to Egypt, to ask for help. The brothers were surprised and even afraid when they found Joseph was in charge of helping peoples who were suffering the drought. But Joseph welcomed his brothers with forgiveness, and he called for his father and much of Israel to be brought to Egypt, so he could be reconciled with his family, and so that he could be sure Israel would survive the drought.

Joseph had favor with the pharaoh of that time, and it went well with Israel in Egypt, for a while.

But then, a pharaoh came to power who didn't know Joseph or his people. This was a pharaoh who feared that the Israelites were too numerous and that they might help an enemy overthrow the pharaoh. So Israel, the Hebrew people who had continued to worship the one God of all creation despite Egypt's idolatry, then were made slaves.

They began the arduous journey of documenting their history, writing on cured animal skins instead of on the kind of paper that Egyptians made from reeds.

And they waited. And they waited for deliverance.

Historians traditionally guessed, again, that the Hebrews were in that bondage because of Ramses II. But recent thought says that does not make sense.

Just guessing, we can puzzle part of the Israel-in-Egypt history together in a different way, in theory. And one theory I'm seeing goes this way:

At the end of the dynasty that Egypt's King Tut was part of, at the end of the Armana period, an Egyptian military leader named Horemheb (or Horus) rose to power over Egypt, taking King Tut's place by being appointed instead of by being a descendant of kings or pharaohs.

Horemheb passed Egypt's leadership on to another Egyptian military leader, Paramesse, who was given the name Ramesses I (a nod to their sun god, "Ra") when Paramesse was inaugurated as pharaoh. Another military leader, a son of Ramesses I, succeeded Ramesses I, beginning an era that attempted to restore Egypt as a military power.

But these of ancient Egypt's leaders don't seem to be war-hungry historic figures. Instead, the first Ramesside pharaohs may have been relatively moral minded and concerned with securing peace.

And, theoretically, the beginning of this era seems like it may have been the right time for our one and only Heavenly Father to start His plan to intercede against slave-holding Egypt.

This era, beginning with Horus as king or pharaoh, seems ideal for casting the faithful Hebrew Joseph into Egyptian captivity, kind of like when God threw Jonah into the mouth of a great fish. 

Joseph was around 17 years old when he was cast into slavery. And if Horus was king or pharaoh at that time, the leadership climate may have been wise and reasonable enough to listen to or communicate with those who were in Egypt as slaves.

If, theoretically, it was Horus who had the dream about a coming famine, it would make sense that he would look to servants who were like sooth sayers in his idolatrous kingdom. A servant who knew Joseph had had insight into a dream, asked the pharaoh, possibly Horus, to consider confiding in Joseph. And, if it was Horus who listened to Joseph, Horus, strong in military logic, would be the ideal pharaoh to promote Joseph to basically chief-of-staff, for the fact that the dream (and how to prepare for the famine) proved true.

Joseph was about 30 years old when he was brought into Egypt's leadership. He was about 39 years old when his brothers showed up seeking help from Egypt. He may have lived a total of about 93 years in Egypt, plenty of time for Horus's successors, including Ramses II, to grow accustomed to Hebrews beginning to live somewhat freely in Egypt.

When historians traditionally counted on the Bible account of about 400 years of Hebrews in Egyptian slavery, they weren't likely taking into account that that slavery had begun before Joseph. So if we look at that possible slavery timeline as starting before Joseph, and if we allow about 170 years after Joseph was enslaved, that brings us to a pharaoh who was in the Ramses leadership tradition but who faced a problem that other pharaohs aren't on record as having. Recorded history shows Ramses V had to cope with at least one plague that Egypt's storehouses couldn't fix: and that was smallpox.

Smallpox could well have been among the ten plagues God allowed Egypt to suffer when God sent Moses to deliver people out of slavery there. The Bible describes one of the ten plagues as causing painful boils; and that is what smallpox does.

So it's possible that about 170 years after Joseph was enslaved, a majority of Hebrew slaves had their exodus or escape out of Egypt.

But how many years did the Hebrews, who were under Joseph's protection, live in relative freedom? Who was the pharaoh who pressed them into hard slavery?

Again, we can try to puzzle together some history, in theory.

We can look at when Egypt had a severe change in leadership and can consider a pharaoh who history says came from unknown origin. Probably more than 130 years after Horus held Egypt's reign, a pharaoh named Setnakhte came to power in old age. Because Setnakhte's background is unknown, that makes him a prime suspect for not knowing anything about Joseph and Joseph's people. The Bible says the Hebrews were pressed into hard labor by a pharaoh who didn't know anything about Joseph.

So history could well be that the Hebrew people in Egypt had about 40 years hard labor, from possibly Setnakhte to possibly Ramses V. About forty years hard labor would explain why Moses, who had spent 40 years living like a prince during a pharaoh's reign, suddenly struck out and killed an Egyptian who was beating a Hebrew.

If there was still relative freedom for the Hebrews while Moses was growing up and living princely, it would have been shocking to him, at 40 years old, to suddenly be living under a man like Setnakhte, who didn't know the Hebrews and who seems like who would have had motive to say (not knowing them) that they were "too many" and needed to be conquered.

Witnessing a harsh change in Egypt's leadership, then killing an Egyptian man, both were probably reasons Moses fled Egypt. Then, 40 years later, he returned to Egypt with a message from the one God of all Heaven and earth:

"Let my people go."

Egyptian slavery wasn't ever completely broken, not until the 20th century, when indentured servitude ended there. Meanwhile, many peoples, all over our world, have celebrated deliverance from having to live in bondage to what the love of Jesus says is iniquity: bondage to sins of the past.

And, yet, there are people clueless enough to wonder why we're singing.