In his
excellent essay, "The Facsimiles and Semitic Adaptation of Existing
Sources” in the book Astronomy, Papyrus, and Covenant:
Proceedings of the 1999 Book of Abraham Conference, Kevin L Barney
discussed how Luke 16:19-31 was an adaptation of an earlier Egyptian narrative
(see the section, Osiris-Abraham, pp. 119-21).
In his
recent book presenting a history of the afterlife in Jewish and Christian
thought, Bart Ehrman, while noting differences between the texts, provided the
following discussion of the parallels between Luke 16:19-31 and the Egyptian
tale of a man named Setne and his adult son Si-Osire:
In the story the two of them are looking out
the window of their house and see the coffin of a rich man being carried out to
the cemetery with great honors. They then see the corpse of a poor beggar
carried out on a mat, with no one attending his funeral. Setne says to his son:
“By Ptah, the great god, how much happier is the rich man who is honored with
the sound of wailing than the poor man who is carried to the cemetery.”
Si-Osire surprises his father by telling him that the poor man will be much
better off in the afterlife than the rich one. He surprises him even more by
proving it.
He takes Setne down to the underworld where
they see how the unrighteous are punished, including some who are in dire
hunger and thirst with food and drink just out of reach above their heads. In
particular, they see a man lying on the ground before a great hall with a large
gate; the hinge of the gate is fixed in the man’s eye socket, swivelling as the
gate opens and shuts, with the man pleading and crying for help. This, as it
turns out, is the rich man they had seen taken off for burial with great honor.
When he arrived in the underworld the judges weighed his misdeeds against his
righteous acts, and he was found seriously wanting. The gate in the eye socket
in his punishment.
Setne and So-Osire also see the rewards of
the righteous, including a very rich person finely clothed, standing by the god
Osiris. This is none other than the poor man they observed unattended at his
burial. When his life was judged, he was found to have done far more good deeds
than wicked ones, and so was he rewarded with the very garments the rich man
more at his own burial.
Si-Osire sums up the situation: “Take it to
your heart, my father Setne: he who is beneficent on earth, to him one is
beneficent in the netherworld. And he who is evil, to him one is evil. So it is
so decreed and will remain so forever.” Far better, that is, to be dirt-poor
and righteous than filthy rich and wicked. Eternal life hinges on it. (Bart D.
Ehrman, Heaven and Hell: A History of the
Afterlife [New York: Simon and Schuster, 2020], 200-1)
For more on
the concept of “Semitic Adaptation,” see:
