View rejoinder by James Rutherford
There is clearly a ‘frame of reference’ problem here. Mr Rutherford seems to think that such a thing as “the plan of God for mankind” is an incontrovertible fact which has somehow become ‘hidden’ (or perhaps, not yet discovered by) the rest of us.
To me personally, this is not so. Not only is the ‘plan’ a debateable issue, but the very existence of God is as well. I can view the Christian’s God as only one theological construction amongst a host of others, stretching back to, and beyond, the old Egyptian gods themselves.
So, when Mr Rutherford states that Mr Saunders must first establish the existence of his extra-terrestrial civilisation before proceeding to reason from the pyramid, I, as a non-Christian, feel much the same about Mr Rutherford’s God and the so-called Divine Plan.
To me it would seem as likely that the Christian God (assuming his existence) would have a hand, as it were, in the building of the Great Pyramid, as, say, Isis would have a hand in the building of Buckingham Palace.
That the Christian God had a hand in the building of the Great Pyramid is to me less plausible than extra-terrestrial intervention, but then even the latter, for me, requires a great deal of justification.
But Mr Rutherford claims evidence outside the Great Pyramid (G.P.) itself – which Mr Saunders does not – and it is to this that I now turn.
First, the Biblical references. It is notable, in my opinion, that neither of these references can be said, by any stretch of the imagination, to refer explicitly and unambiguously, to the G.P.
Mr Rutherford admits this and tells us that the use of ‘indirect’ references was deliberate and designed to conceal the Divine Revelation till the proper time for its discovery.
Now though this might seem perfectly satisfactory to Mr Rutherford, it is hardly likely to appeal to one who has doubts about the reality of the Divine Plan itself.
The sceptic is more likely to say, “Ah! But Biblical Symbolism has been turned to suit many a wild theory, how do I know that this is not just another of those?”
One instance of this – though the theory is hardly ‘wild’ – is the reincarnation controversy. Does the Doctrine of Reincarnation conflict with orthodox Christianity, or not? Some say it does, and others say it doesn’t, and the controversy frequently hinges about ‘indirect’ Biblical references (e.g. Matt. 16:13–14).
Another instance is the hunt for Biblical UFOs – does II Samuel 22:11 refer to a Flying Saucer? Does II Kings 2:11? Or Psalm 68:17? (I am indebted to D. F. McConnell’s Flying Saucers of the Lord, Florida 1969, for these references.) Well, they could do, I suppose, but … to be brief, I need a lot more convincing.
On a more trivial and mundane, not to mention, amusing, plane, the reader might like to try the following ‘for size’: that Acts 19:31 refers to the musical “O Calcutta!”; that Lamentations 4:21 refers to the much frowned-upon act of “streaking”; that Ecclesiastes 2:5 and Isaiah 18:5 refer to Percy Thrower and his activities. (I intend no-one to take these as serious counter-examples to either Mr Rutherford’s or Mr McConnell’s references: they are intended purely as a light-hearted reminder that Biblical verses can be misapplied.)
To return then to Mr Rutherford’s Biblical references, particularly the one from Isaiah 19, which is undoubtedly the more challenging of the two. Here are the relevant verses from my Bible (as opposed to Mr Rutherford’s rather biassed rendition of it):
19. In that day shall there be an altar to the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt, and a pillar at the border thereof to the Lord.
20. And it shall be for a sign and for a witness unto the Lord of hosts in the land of Egypt: for they shall cry unto the Lord because of their oppressors, and he shall send them a saviour, and a great one, and he shall deliver them.
David Randell is having some work done on these verses, I believe, and I look forward to its appearance. Meanwhile, here is what I have unearthed on this matter so far.
Mr Rutherford views the altar and the pillar as referring to the same monument (i.e., the G.P.), and proceeds to show how the G.P. satisfies simultaneously the apparently contradictory descriptions of ‘in the midst’ and ‘at the border’. Young’s Analytical Concordance, in referring to the Hebrew words used in Isaiah 19:19, lists ‘altar’ under the heading “slaughter place” and ‘pillar’ under the heading “a thing set up, a standing pillar” (see note at end).
This accords well with what the ordinary, common-sense reader of the Bible would understand by the reading of the verse.
Certainly, to me, Isaiah 19:19 suggests that the altar and the pillar are representative of a variety of monuments and buildings, dedicated to the Lord, and scattered throughout the formerly pagan land of Egypt ‘from the centre, to the very border’. This is, I think, borne out by verse 21.
Such was my own view of the verse, and it was confirmed, and expanded, in a most interesting way, when quite by chance I came upon F. C. Cook’s Holy Bible with Commentary, vol. V, pp. 138–139. This I found so interesting that I include, at the end of the present article, a complete copy of the relevant note on Isaiah 19:19. It throws some interesting light not only on this particular verse in Isaiah, but also on the ‘fulfilment’ of Biblical Prophecy generally.
So what of de Blaere’s numerological result, quoted by Mr Rutherford, that the numerical value of the original Hebrew text of Isaiah 19:19–29 corresponds to the original height of the G.P. in Pyramid inches?
As Mr Rutherford states it, this relationship sounds a very precise cut-and-dried affair. But in fact, this is far from being the case.
For a start, there are many who would doubt the very existence of the so-called Pyramid inch. I would like to see, in Mr Rutherford’s next contribution, some evidence in favour of this controversial unit of measurement.
The again, if I intended to preserve, until the time were ripe, a revelation such as this correspondence between Bible and Pyramid, I would not trust a vital part of the relationship to such an easily damaged thing as the height of a pyramid, where the inherent exactitude of the relationship (which fails as soon as the pyramid loses even 1 pyramid inch of height!) stands a high probability of being lost.
Two further points about the assumptions behind the de Blaere result: (a) how do we know the topstone was never put in place? and (b) even if it is true that the capstone was never put in place, what evidence is there that the original height (as opposed to the present-day dilapidated height) was 5449 Pyramid Inches, and not an inch more or less? (In addition to (b), and the evidence for such precision of deduction concerning the former height of the G.P., I would also like to hear a lot more about Mr Rutherford’s assertion that “the G.P. was actually constructed slightly smaller than the original design.”)
For myself, I can see the original height of the G.P. to be anything from 5399 Pyramid Inches (present height) to 5771 Pyramid Inches (height if capstone was ever put in position), these heights being derived from figures given in Edwards’s The Pyramids of Egypt, p. 118. The required 5449 falls within this range, certainly – but there are a lot of other values in this range as well.
Seen in this light, and without considerably more evidence, de Blaere’s relationship loses its cut-and-dried nature, and becomes a somewhat dubious numerical ‘prop’.
Then again there is the Nile delta scheme, discovered in 1868 by Henry Mitchell. To quote Mr Rutherford: “The shoreline of the Delta forms the circumference of the quadrant of a circle, the centre of which falls on the G.P.”
It seems to me that, as with de Blaere’s result, Mr Rutherford has introduced an unwarranted precision into the proceedings.
The Nile Delta can be used to approximately define the quadrant of a circle, and the G.P. can be viewed as the ‘centre’ of that approximate quadrant, but the scheme is only an approximate possibility, – as Mitchell himself was careful to state: “Although my arc is over 100 degrees, I do not pretend to distinguish between the G.P. and its immediate neighbours of the same group.” (Quoted from Smyth’s booklet Equal Surface Projection etc., 1879, p. 26.)
An experiment I did a while back may be of interest here. I measured a sample of 25 distances from the Giza group to the Delta coastline. The mean distance was about 110 miles, and the average deviation from this (called by statisticians the mean deviation) was about 2 miles.
In other words, the Giza Group by no means acts as a totally conclusive ‘centre’ for the Delta coastline – anything within a mile or so will do just as well!
Of course, it might be argued that a mile either way, with respect to something as impressive as the Giza Pyramids, is not really all that drastic. That is a matter for personal belief. My point here is that Mr Rutherford’s presentation of the Delta Scheme could mislead the unwary into accepting the scheme as an indisputable and precise fact, when this is most definitely not the case.
Finally, we come to the passage quoted from Matthew 21:42, and which is in itself a reference to Psalm 118:28.
Cook (previously quoted on the Isaiah verses), in his vol. IV, p. 441, quotes De Wette on the Psalm verse:
“A stone, they say, rejected of the builders as useless, has been chosen, and set in the place of chiefest importance in the palace or temple.”
Cook further mentions that “corner stone” is taken by some authorities to mean “foundation stone”, and this is borne out, it seems, by Ephesians 2:20, which Mr Rutherford quotes, and which reads as follows:
“And are built upon the foundations of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone.”
Now I take this to mean that Christ and the Apostles are the foundation stones of what is called (in verse 19) “the household of God”. Christ is a foundation stone – not a top-stone, or a cap-stone – and it would be odd indeed if Christ were not singled out for special mention over and above the apostles and prophets, would it not?
Perhaps Christ is the chief corner-stone in the same sense that the ‘first stone’ of a modern building – the one frequently laid by some notable or famous person – can be said to be the chief foundation stone.
Something along these lines would seem to me to be quite plausible, and so when Mr Rutherford tells me that “chief cornerstone” only makes sense in the case of a pyramid, well, quite frankly I feel he is clutching at straws.
The following remarks are by way of a conclusion to the present essay.
Mr Rutherford believes the evidence in his first contribution to this folio “factually establishes the basis for looking at the Great Pyramid in a Religious context.”
For myself, I do not believe that the evidence he has presented is anywhere near strong enough to justify his claim that by virtue of external evidence he is a scientific cut-above the other theorists in the folio.
To me, his essay is a collection of circumstantial possibilities not one of which is strong enough to stop the not-already-converted, and make him think, “Aha! Here is something over and above the usual contents of Pyramid Theories.”
If I were to be asked to single out what I consider personally to be his most impressive fact presented, I would reply “The Nile Delta Scheme” – and this is in no way influenced by my non-Christian leanings. I have, I hope, considered the Biblical quotations on their own contextual merits, and quite aside from my personal beliefs.
The Nile Delta scheme is an intriguing possibility, which could, like the π theory, be used by any Pyramid theorist, Biblical or otherwise. Mr Rutherford uses it to back up his interpretation of Isaiah 19:19. I can imaging Mr von Däniken using it to show that the site of the Pyramid was chosen by extra-terrestrials in a space-ship hovering over the Delta (perhaps whilst making the Piri Reis maps - see Chariots of the Gods?, p. 30!)
But apart from the Nile Delta scheme – and I am not at all convinced that even this has any significance – I remain unimpressed.
When Mr Rutherford talks, in his final paragraph, of “establishing a sound basis”, I, for one, do not feel he has accomplished anything approaching this.
Robert Forrest. January 1977.
1. Interestingly, the English transliteration of the Hebrew word used here for pillar is matstsebah, which does sound similar to mastaba, the word for the type of Egyptian tomb from which the pyramidal tomb is thought to have developed. I don’t know much about the linguistics of such a comparison, but I do know that almost unlimited romances can be woven about such word similarities, and so I am inclined to distrust them – this one included. (As an example of a curious work constructed largely from word similarities, I would cite Comyns Beaumont’s The Riddle of Prehistoric Britain, Rider, 1948.)
2. The words altar (mizbeach) and pillar (matstsebah), in addition to occurring together in Isaiah 19:19, also occur together in Exodus 24:4, which reads: “And Moses wrote all the words of the Lord, and rose up early in the morning, and builded an altar under the hill, and twelve pillars according to the twelve tribes of Israel.”
Mizbeach is the word also used for pillar in Genesis 8:20 – clearly meaning “slaughter place”; and matstsebah is also used for pillar in Genesis 28:18 – clearly what we would understand as an obelisk, or perhaps simply a ‘standing stone’.
3. See Exodus 20:24–26. The word for altar here is again, in each verse, mizbeach. If, as Mr Rutherford claims, altar in Isaiah 19:19 refers to the Great Pyramid, then it is odd indeed that these verses in Exodus indicate the Lord’s aversion for a stepped altar of hewn stone, for is not the G.P., the altar of Isaiah 19:19, with is courses of closely fitted block, a stepped altar of hewn stone?
19. an altar to the Lord]. A strange conception for one who wrote at a time when the old Egyptian priesthood seemed more powerful than ever! Yet that there was a literal ‘altar to the Lord’ erected in Egypt, and that this literal fulfilment of the prophecy was overtly sanctioned by a king of Egypt, who had access to Isaiah’s writings in a Greek version which had been prepared a hundred years before by order of an ancestor of that king, – all this is no less certain than it is striking.
It was in the district of Heliopolis, on the site of a ruined temple at Leontopolis (some 20 miles N.E. of Memphis, Joseph. B.J.’ vii.10), that the high-priest Onias IV built his temple, under a special licence from Ptolemy Philometor (about 180 B.C.). Onias in his petition had quoted Isaiah’s words in the verse before us. Ptolemy in his reply says: “Since you say that Isaiah so long ago foretold it, we give thee licence, if according to law; that we may not seem to have offended against God.” (Cp. v. 17 above).
The fact that language like this should have been used by a king of Egypt is, in any case, a remarkable proof of the ‘overthrow’ of idolatry that had taken place, not at Heliopolis only, but throughout the land; “in the midst of it” and “at its border”.
So then – apart from any singular incident, – the general symbolic meaning of the prophecy was undoubtedly fulfilled. Egypt had been for 1400 years covered with idolatrous altars and obelisks; and it must in Isaiah’s time have seemed incredible that so firmly organised a system should ever be broken up. Yet such an event was brought about by a series of movements, – Assyrian , Babylonian, Persian and Greek, – which commenced (as the next chapter shows) almost immediately after the date of the above prediction.
a pillar at the border thereof]. The Jewish synagogue first, and afterwards the Christian Church, at Alexandria stood like a lofty obelisk, with the name of the Lord inscribed on it, at the entrance of Egypt.