Near Eastern Parallels to Old Testament Theophanies

Most of the near eastern gods had a more or less human-shaped body. Sometimes this body was described as being invisible. For example the Egyptian texts taught that the sun god Re (Ra) had a body that no one could see. The reason for this is obvious for no one could look straight at the sun. The gods around Israel were not always invisible, at least not all the time. Priests and prophets claimed to receive messages from the gods, and sometimes claimed to have seen them. An interesting example comes from the coronation inscription of one of Egypt's greatest Pharaohs. This ruler Thutmose III was probably the Pharaoh of Israel's oppression. The Pharaoh who followed him was probably the Pharaoh of the Exodus. Thutmose III claimed that god had opened for him the doors of heaven, the portals of the horizon of Re. Thutmose claimed that he had flown to heaven as a divine hawk beholding god's form in heaven. Thutmose claimed that he had adored this divine majesty in a heavenly feast, and had seen the glorious forms of the horizon god on his mysterious ways in heaven. This was a pretty clear claim by the young king that he had seen God.

In Egypt the Pharaohs always claimed to be the incarnation of the god Horus as such anytime that the Pharaohs appeared in public the people were seeing a theophany. In one instance the Egyptians believed that at the king's wishes rain was produced and a well was made in the desert.

Theophanies seen in the storm cloud were common in the Ugaritic (A very early form of Hebrew) Canaanite literature. In those early Hebrew texts the god disclosed himself in cloud, thunder, and lightning just as Yahweh appeared in the Old Testament. Theophanies also occurred in the Tigris-Euphrates valleys. King Gudea ruled in Mesopotamia. He claimed to see a god and said his form was like the heaven and his form was like the earth.

It must be noted here that the above myths and many other from the Ancient Near East are argued as proof that Israel borrowed their theology from the Egyptians. The question then comes as to where the proof is for this argument? Couldn't the Egyptians have borrowed their theology from the Hebrews instead of vice versa? This is what the Old Testament teaches, that every other divine truth claims apart from the God of the Bible are actually perversions of the divine truth. This is what the Near Eastern myths are; they are distortions of divine truth.