Pharaoh's Last Testament

By Jacob G. Ghazarian

Joseph John Campbell, the eminent comparative mythologist had once posed the question: What is the meaning of a flower in a field, and why was it there? Drawing upon this theme, the author explores the origins of faith and belief, and presents the narrative of the book as a series of dialogues amongst a number of key characters. The protagonist is a young university student whose life’s journey is moulded by the words of his mentor who offers the thoughts of Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas, and many other pre- and post-Socratic Greek philosophers, to arrive at conclusions about faith, morality and in the search of the divine.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: Apr 19, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664115231

Jacob G. Ghazarian

Jacob G Ghazarian, D.Phil, is a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland in London. He is an alumnus and an emeritus member of Wolfson College, the University of Oxford where his studies have focused on the religio-political milieu of the indigenous peoples of the Levant and the Orient. Several of his published books have dealt with cross-cultural belief systems, art, literature and architecture which had forged links across a wide swathe of societies extending from the Far East to Jerusalem and to Rome.

Book preview

Pharaoh’s

Last Testament

Jacob G. Ghazarian

Copyright © 2021 by Jacob G. Ghazarian.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 04/15/2021

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CONTENTS

For

Friar Simon

Ordo Fratrum Minorum

            In all creation Nothing endures,

            All is in endless flux,

            Each wandering shape a pilgrim passing by.

            And time itself glides on in ceaseless flow,

            A rolling stream-and streams can never stay,

            Nor lightfoot hours.

            As wave is driven by wave

            And each, pursued, pursues the wave ahead,

            So time flies on and follows, flies, and follows.

            Always, for ever and new. What was before

            Is left behind; what never was is now;

            And every passing moment is renewed.

- Ovid, Metamorphoses

A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

The story told in this book is an original fictional dramatization of the personal journey of a young man attempting to intellectualise the foundations of his Christian faith whilst struggling to halt his own dwindling and tenuous belief in the face of an onslaught of contradictions posed by his mother and by his parish priest. He is guided by a tutor who develops the young man’s faculties by bringing to light a vast array of ancient philosophical and theological ideas, disputes and heresies which, in the main, have defined Western civilization. Some of the ideas and their potential relevance to Christian dogmas, along with a few metaphorical anecdotes, have recently been in the public domain through the reviews and interviews of the eminent educator, and publisher, Dr. E. Michael Jones, Ph.D., an ardent apologist for the Roman Catholic Church. My efforts in the context of the present book have been to create an inclusive narrative by revisiting the original thoughts of the ancient Greek philosophers, and along with many other ancillary topics, to present it in some detail in the form of dialogues amongst the major characters in the story in order to impart not only the essence of the young man’s journey, but also to arrive to new possibilities in understanding biblical morphemes. It is hoped that this book will also encourage the inquiring minds of itinerant readers to pursue their own personal discovery of the truths that have stood hidden, or at best, have remained unanswered. And, finally, the purpose of the key words added to each chapter heading is intended to be suggestive of their relevance within their chapters.

Jacob G. Ghazarian

March 2021

INTRODUCTION

After much deliberation and consultations with colleagues, it became abundantly clear that a brief synopsis of the story being told in this book might provide for the itinerant reader an early road map to facilitate following the emotional, and equally the spiritual, journey of the 19-year old protagonist, Joe Campanella, which the story develops in flash-backs and lengthy dialogues during Joe’s four years at the university. This, however, is most certainly not to imply that the synopsis is indispensable, but I hope its presentation will be accepted as a welcome and an informative feature of the book; hence, it is presented in a hand-full of paragraphs below.

The central plot of the story is a search by 19 year-old Joe Campanella for fundamental answers to questions about his tenuous faith in Christianity which had begun to trouble him upon entering university. During one of his classes early in the first year at the university, Joe witnesses an incident which leads him to see a cryptic writing of a few unintelligible words on the blackboard of his classroom. Joe believes it was an apparition, but unlike the biblical hand writing on the wall, which had foretold the demise of the king of Babylon, the phantom cryptic words on the blackboard will ultimately be interpreted by a surrogate Daniel that provides Joe with a new revelation about his faith.

Joe is essentially a good son living with his widowed mother Veronica, a devout woman of Roman Catholic faith yet views the priest of her parish church with much disdain and thinks of him as evil and a charlatan. The spiritual disparity between the opinionated and dominant Veronica and her son, a son who holds his mother with much empathy and love, is painfully apparent in Veronica’s repeated disregard and chastisements of her son’s many attempts seeking meaningful dialogues with her about their mutually exclusive spiritual and personal predicaments. She holds there is no connection between faith and reason because faith is like a pair of eyes; one does not question why the eyes can see. At the university, Joe befriends a departmental office secretary named Magdalene who is rebuked by Veronica with the insidious remark that her Episcopalian father should not have given her the name of the un-virtuous biblical woman. Yet Magdalene in conversations with Joe has made attempts to explain to Joe the meaning of love and what Christ may have meant by saying ‘Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God’ delivered as one of the beatitudes of his Sermon on the Mount.

Joe’s life journey is encapsulated and contrasted by four additional characters who engage Joe with thoughts on morality and in the search of the divine. The first character, who had left Joe with the most endearing memories of his formative years in a privately run primary school, was a Franciscan friar and a deacon of the church adjacent to the school grounds. Friar Simon was an energetic, creative and an uplifting person who exuded with the love of his life in service; he had instilled joy and happiness in young Joe’s malleable heart during his fleeting school lunch-hour visits of the church.

Of the other three characters, two have the same name and both are priests of the order of the Society of Jesus founded by Saint Ignatius of Loyola in the sixteenth century. The younger Fr. Cornelius was Joe’s mentor in a Jesuit-run high school who had introduced him to inductive reasoning and syllogism. The older Fr. Cornelius is the robust, confident and intimidating parish priest of Joe’s local church who is despised by Veronica. Joe confronts the older priest about the nature of good and evil and why one may be identified as evil. He reminds the priest that the Holy Book is much more than a compendium on morality, it is also a road map to our terminal destination.

Timothy, Joe’s substitute philosophy teacher at the university, and who is also a neighbor, is the tour de force in Joe’s life who with his endless hours of discussions over the duration of Joe’s four years at the university brings Joe to the realization that the precepts of the Christian Church, which we identify with in the present, were achieved after many turbulent centuries of polemical disputes between the Early Church Fathers and perceived heretics. Timothy brings to Joe the history of the evolution of man’s belief in a divinity citing many of the leading pre-Socratic Greek thinkers of antiquity and of the contributions extracted from their legends and mythologies. Timothy describes that Aristotle was the central figure whose perceptions of the universe were disseminated throughout the known world in the West and the East by his pupil the Macedonian Alexander the Great, and first reconciled into Christian theology by the two Alexandrian Church Fathers Origen and Clement, and subsequently carried forward by Saint Thomas Aquinas, who offers in his Summa Theologiae a distinction between the application of faith versus reason. But it was Saint John the Apostle, says Timothy, who provides the ultimate understanding of the nature of the divinity. The story ultimately ends with the disclosure of Veronica’s reasons for her animosities towards her parish priest, the older Fr. Cornelius, and their impact on Joe’s personal life.

Generalized%20Historical%20Periods.jpg

CHAPTER I

Key words: Enus Dominus Moralis Petrus, primary school,

podcast, Veronica, Fr. Cornelius, appointment, Magdalene,

Timothy, Agathodaemon, Joseph Campbell

In the Beginning

Joe Campanella was a first year registered student at St Thomas University in Marysville, and had just left the classroom after attending his first philosophy lecture delivered by a professor listed as John Mancini in the Fall term’s booklet for the university’s course offerings from the Department of Social Sciences. A Bachelor’s Degree from the university required from all students the successful completion of at least one elective subject from a group of topics defined as Humanities. None of the young students present at the lecture were familiar with the professor, nor with the subject of philosophy. Characteristically, typical of the subject of philosophy, there were too many curious ideas discussed during the lecture which had compelled Joe to decide to return to the classroom for a chance to meet and compliment the professor for the most intriguing and thought-provoking lecture he had delivered on the subject of ‘Being’ though Joe did not have the slightest comfort regarding his understanding of the topic. John Mancini had elaborated on his topic by citing the example of ‘on the existence of man’ to simplify and amplify his discussion points, but his young students were novices of the subject of philosophy, and the example had not left the indelible impression Mancini had hoped. He was indeed dedicated to his vocation as a teacher, and cared much about the message of his teachings. When Joe returned to the lecture room, he found a number of students milling around aimlessly with no apparent purpose, which forced him to manoeuvre his approach carefully towards the professor. But, just as Joe’s eyes caught the reserved smile on the professor’s face, there was a roar, a roar like the roar of a thickly manned lion declaring his dominance over the vast surrounding bushy fields, but it was also a roar that mingled with the shrouded and fearful murmurings of the disoriented students uncertain of their predicament. Instantly, the floor of the classroom began to shake and the strewn student chairs began to rattle in their places as if by some choreographic design; yet no one seemed to be able to escape the moment. Suddenly a pervasive silence encapsulated the lecture room amidst a haze of blinding dust slowly descending by force of gravity. The hazy light that shone from the windows was just strong enough for Joe to note parts of a few unfamiliar written words with white chalk on the shining face of the hanging blackboard. He could not instantly recall of instances when the professor was writing on the blackboard as part of his remarks for edifying and enriching his presentation, nor the context in which the words had been written. Yet Joe was transfixed, puzzled and bewildered by the words that he could barely see through the lingering dusty haze. It was as if some divine hand had come down from the firmament to scribble the incomprehensible words ‘Enus Dominus Moralis Petrus.’ Joe thought perhaps by some strange coincidence the word ‘Petrus’ was a corruption of the Latin word for Peter. He was not sure. He did not know. Were these truly the words of Professor Mancini? He wanted to ask, but to his amazement, the professor had vanished from the room the instant Joe realized it was imperative that he speak with the professor. But Joe was not overly concerned, he thought he could soon make an appointment with Mancini’s secretary, named Magdalene Teddy, for a meeting at another time. His immediate purpose was to clear himself of the mayhem in the lecture room and find his way out into the clean air.

Lost in his thoughts, Joe walked around the university’s manicured grounds and tried, to no avail, to intellectually digest his thoughts about what he had just heard at the lecture and seen on the blackboard. He was a 19 year-old first year university student mostly unequipped to debate the perplexing questions that have plagued humanity’s most esteemed intellectuals for well over a millennium. He had always described himself as inquisitive, curious, courageous and cautiously conservative when it came to making the commitments of his mind and soul. But as he wandered aimlessly in the cool of the early afternoon breeze, his eyes caught the statue of a child perched upon a plinth in the middle of a circular pool with both of its arms stretched openly towards the heavens. Joe did not momentarily question the purpose of the statue’s imagery but simply assumed it was the product