BY DAN HILDEBRAN
Monitor Editor
KEYSTONE HEIGHTS— The pastor of the Keystone Heights United Methodist Church spoke to a Lake Region civic group about his recent trip to Egypt and how Egyptologists have linked sites and artifacts in the ancient country to stories in the Bible.
Jeff Tate told the Keystone Heights Rotary Club that after preaching from the Bible for more than 20 years, he sometimes forgets that the places mentioned in the scriptures are places people can visit today.
“I often don’t make the connection between the fact that the Bible actually is placed in history,” he said. “There is life happening outside of the biblical narrative.”
Tate said that in the Bible, Egypt is portrayed as a place of refuge. Abraham traveled there in response to a famine in Canaan, and Jacob and his family moved to Egypt when another famine threatened the clan’s survival.
Tate added that in the New Testament, Joseph took Mary and Jesus to the area of modern-day Cairo to escape the threat of King Herod.
Abraham
Tate said the Old Testament patriarch Abraham impacted Egyptian history by persuading the country’s monarch to convert from polytheism to worshiping one God.
He explained that the Pharaoh Akhenaten ruled the country in the New Kingdom.
“This particular king changed the theology from many different gods to one god,” Tate said, “and it just so happened to be about the time of Abraham.”
“Now there was a famine in the land; so, Abram went down to Egypt to live there for a time, because the famine was severe in the land. It came about, when he was approaching Egypt, that he said to his wife Sarai, ‘See now, I know that you are a beautiful woman; and when the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife’; and they will kill me, but they will let you live. Please say that you are my sister so that it may go well for me because of you, and that I may live on account of you.” Genesis 12:10-13 NASB
“We have the story in Genesis,” Tate continued, “that when he met the Pharaoh after he lied to him: told (Pharaoh) that Sarah (Abraham’s) wife was (Abraham’s) sister, and the king found out about it, he convinced the king, and we believe it is Akhenaten, to move from many gods to the one God.”
Joseph
Tate showed the club a photo of a large stone that documents the period in which the Israelites lived in Egypt.
He said the inscription on the stone, now likely housed in the Grand Egyptian Museum, documents commerce between Egyptians and the descendants of Abraham.
“Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, ‘Your father and your brothers have come to you. The land of Egypt is at your disposal; settle your father and your brothers in the best of the land, let them live in the land of Goshen; and if you know any capable men among them, then put them in charge of my livestock.’” Genesis 47:5-6 NASB
“Toward the end of Genesis, you read the story of Joseph,” Tate said, “Joseph brings his family to Egypt and they were herders, and the Egyptian king at the time identified as Ramesses by the Bible actually gives all of his cattle, all of his sheep and goats to (Joseph’s father) Jacob and his family to herd them, and so they would have been trading back and forth.”
Tate showed the club a slide of an ancient temple and grain silo that could have been used during Joseph’s food storage project during the country’s seven years of plenty that was to be followed by seven years of famine as described in Genesis 41.
“During the seven years of plenty the land produced abundantly. So, he collected all the food of these seven years which occurred in the land of Egypt and put the food in the cities; he put in every city the food from its own surrounding fields. Joseph stored up grain in great abundance like the sand of the sea, until he stopped measuring it, for it was beyond measure.” Genesis 41:47-49 NASB
“Archaeologists tell us that they can still find ancient grain, just remnants of it, in many of these places,” Tate said.
Moses
Tate displayed a slide showing a reed basket discovered near the oldest mummy in the country. He said the basket is likely very similar to the basket described in Exodus 2, which carried the infant Moses down the Nile River.
“And the woman conceived and gave birth to a son; and when she saw that he was beautiful, she hid him for three months. But when she could no longer hide him, she got him a papyrus basket and covered it with tar and pitch. Then she put the child in it and set it among the reeds by the bank of the Nile.” Exodus 2: 2-3 NASB.
“This basket would have been very similar to what Moses would have been put in in the Exodus story,” Tate said. “(He was) put into the Nile, pushed out into the middle with the hopes that maybe something miraculous will happen.”
Tate also displayed a slide of the Temple of Hatshepsut, whom he said was one of the few queens that ruled Egypt. He added that Queen Hatshepsut temporarily took power due to the death of her husband and young age of their oldest son.
Getting back to the narrative of Moses, Tate reminded the group that one of Pharaoh’s daughters discovered Moses among the Nile’s bulrushes and adopted him as one of her own.
“Now the daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the Nile, with her female attendants walking alongside the Nile; and she saw the basket among the reeds and sent her slave woman, and she brought it to her. When she opened it, she saw the child, and behold, the boy was crying. And she had pity on him and said, ‘This is one of the Hebrews’ children.’” Exodus 2:5-6 NASB
The Methodist pastor added that some historians think the princess that rescued Moses from the Nile and Hatshepsut are one and the same.
Jesus
Tate said that according to the biblical account, Joseph took Mary and the toddler Jesus to the area of modern Cairo after being warned by an angel that King Herod intended to kill Jesus.
“Now when they had gone, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, ‘Get up! Take the Child and His mother and flee to Egypt and stay there until I tell you; for Herod is going to search for the Child to kill Him.’” Matthew 2:13-14 NASB
Tate showed the group slides of Saint Virgin Mary’s Coptic Orthodox Church in Cairo. The building is also known as “the hanging church” because its nave is suspended over a passageway of an ancient gatehouse.
“This is a church that was built on top of what many believe was most likely the area or the place where Jesus’s family came and lived,” he said. “There was actually a community of Jewish people that lived all throughout the northern part of Egypt.”
Tate added that trips he has made to Israel, Turkey and England has expanded his knowledge of biblical stories and the history of his denomination.
