Christianity and meaning of ‘foundation’

The Latin fundus, we saw recently, is the etymological root of both ‘funds’ and ‘fundamentals’. But, due to space, we did not discuss certain other derivatives of the Latin original. Take the verb to ‘found’. Do not confuse it with the past tense form (found) of the verb to ‘find’. 

To ‘found’ (whose past tense form is founded) is to bring into being, to establish, say, an institution — like a factory, a school, even a school of thought — by laying a fundus for it. Imhotep founded the Great Pyramid; Plato founded the Academy; Zeno founded Stoicism; Akhenaten founded formal monotheism.

FOUNDATION STONES

As it were, they laid the foundation stones (material or only metaphorical) of those respective systems. A foundation stone is that block which you lay — as a rule, in a ritualised function — to mark the beginning of the construction of a new building or something of the same sort. A foundation, then, is the fundus — the basic structure below the ground — that will carry and, as it were, distribute the load or weight of the whole building atop it.

A foundation is the pedestal or bedrock on which something stands. A foundation is an endowment for supporting an institution or a social cause — like Kenyatta, Ford, Nobel and Rockefeller.

Metaphorically, a foundation is the basic experience, idea or attitude on which a social belief rests.

We now know that the Nilo-Coptic god Aten — the monotheon imposed by Pharaoh Amenhotep IV (self-styled Akhenaten but known to his Israelite slaves as Moses) — was the foundation of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. When the Egyptian priests rejected his monotheistic imposition and threatened to kill him, Akhenaten fled to Sudan.

MILITARY

It was in Sinai, in his peregrination, that the Lord Jethro — whose daughter Tharbis (“Zipporah”) he later married — sold him the idea of returning to Egypt to recapture his kingdom militarily.

The Lord’s strategy was that Akhenaten-Moses should recruit the Israelite slaves as his Myrmidons to wage war on official Egypt, recapture it, convert the slaves into his Atenist monotheon and, in exchange, promise to emancipate them after the victory.

But his ragtag army was routed, whereupon he fled with many of the slaves into the desert, occasioning the biblical legend of Exodus.

In short, the former pharaoh Akhenaten — the royal Copt later known pseudonymously as Moses (“The Son”) — was the founder of the formal monotheism that later spawned the three Western theisms.

PROFOUND THOUGHT

Predictably, the newly wangled “Judaeo-Christian tradition” has swiftly declared “heretical” this New-Age hypothesis. But, with what we now know about the Bible’s code language (known in Hebrew as pesharim), it is a profound thought.

The adjective ‘profound’ refers to real or ideal things that penetrate right down to the fundus, to the bottom, to the roots.

Metaphorically, it de- scribes statements that reveal deep and extensive knowledge.

With regard to the human mind, ‘profound’ also means “strongly felt”, “intense” and “thoroughgoing”. Both literally and metaphorically, then, ‘profundity’ (the noun) refers to the great depth – the fundus – of any object or thought.

Philip Ochieng is a veteran journalist.