The Egyptian tale in
question is that of a man named Setme and his adult son Si-Osiris. Si-Osiris
was an Egyptian granted the ability to return from Amente, the realm of the
dead, to earth as the reincarnation of a childless couple. He was charged with
dispatching an Egyptian magician whom the other magicians could not control. By
the age of twelve, he succeeded in his mission, but not before both he and his
father observed the funerals of a rich man and poor man alike.
In this portion of the tale,
the two are watching from a window as a rich man is buried in all his pomp,
before their gaze turns to a miserable deceased beggar whisked away on a mat.
Setme turns to his son and says, “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-Osiris explains, to his father’s bewilderment,
that the poor man will receive better treatment in Amente than the rich man. To
prove his point, he takes his father on a tour of the seven halls of Amente,
where its inhabitants are categorized by those whose good deeds outnumber their
misdeeds, those whose misdeeds outnumber their good deeds, and those whose
misdeeds and good deeds are equal. Witnessing the punishments of the wicked,
father and son perceive amongst such rabble a man sprawled on the ground facing
a great hall, whose large gate’s hinge is fixated in the man’s eye socket. As
it opens and closes, the man shrieks in pain, and, as it so happens, this man
is none other than the rich man. Unfortunately, when the time had come for his
righteous deeds to be weighed against his evil actions, he had been found
seriously wanting, whereas the poor man had been adorned in lavish garments
(ironically enough the rich man’s own former garments) and stood at the side of
the god Osiris. The story concludes with the ominous words, “He who has been
good on earth, will be blessed in the kingdom of the dead, and he who has been
evil on earth, will suffer in the kingdom of the dead.”
Does any of this sound
familiar? It should, for in no small way does Jesus’ parable emulate this
Egyptian tale. (Andrew Hronich,
Once Loved Always Loved: The Logic of Apokatastasis [Eugene, Oreg.: Wipf
and Stock, 2023], 254-55)
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