As a former Christian who is now going from Deist to Atheist, I thought it was a good read on the subject, and one of the most objective treatments I’ve seen.
Hopefully, a future column can feature a more comprehensive comparison of the Jesus myth to the earlier myths of Osiris, Dionysus and Mithra. IIRC, there are a lot of similarities, but most of the material available online is either Atheists saying “Jesus was a complete rip-off of earlier pagan gods” or fundamentalist Christians saying “The Jesus story is completely 100% factual and not ‘ripped off’ from anything.”
I agree with the OP. My conclusion is that Jesus existed and then legends were written and told about him, and those took ideas from other religions. Perhaps one could say, that “The image of Jesus” assimilated material from earlier archetypal images, like Horus, Dionysos and so forth and so on, which at the time had lost its appeal, until there’s an “archetype of Jesus”, a more (at the time) modern symbol which people could relate to, but which has lost its appeal to the contemporary man, to whom this god image seems pointless.
Contrary to the article, the notion that the Jesus myth borrows from the Egyptian mythology (or other mythologies) isn’t the invention of Tom Harpur. It was a commonplace at least as far back as the 1930s, where it was made fun of in Bugalikov’s sarcastic comic masterpiece The Master and Margarita (where a Soviet cultural commissar-slash-editor making that very point is personally murdered by Satan, to teach him a lesson!).
Personally, I think it is impossible to say whether there was some borrowings from other mythology, or whether there are certain aspects to religion that are simply universaly common such that people independently invent the same patterns again and again. Probably a bit of both. (For example, Bugalikov’s mention of the Aztec god is probably an example of him taking a sarcastic shot at diffusionism, since it is of course impossible, or at least extremely unlikely, that Jesus was inspired by the Aztecs!)
Former OTO member (and current atheist, and, I suppose, incredibly lax quasi-Buddhist) checking in here. It goes back earlier than the 1930s; the Osiris-as-Jesus thing was part of the Golden Dawn system and carried on, naturally, through Crowley. The Golden Dawn set in the late 1800s, as I recall, rising again briefly around the turn of the century when Regardie was involved.
Absolutely it must have, and not just by guys like Crowley. The point is that by the 1930s, the view was commonplace enough to be the subject of satire. That means it must go back considerably earlier than the 30s.
According to the film The God Who Wasn’t There, an official Christian response (from either Catholics, Lutherans or Baptists – can’t remember which) was that Satan knew beforehand how the Jesus story would unfold and so influenced the pagan writers to create their deity stories similarly so Jesus wouldn’t seem special.
The fact that someone went to the time and trouble to craft this ludicrous response and put it in the official text of a major Christian denomination shows that these parallels are hardly new.
It’s not like Horus was the only god around in antiquity. Even Augustus Caesar was supposed to be the son of Apollo. I don’t see the Jesus story as being copied from any particular source, but it seems like there were certain expectations of gods and so forth in those days and the gospels conformed to them.
Certainly one of the critical notions of any religion has been the question of death, and whether there is life after death. It’s thus not surprising to find resurrection stories in most religions, whether Egyptian, Babylonian, or Aztec. thus, it can easily seem that the later religions are “borrowing” from the earlier ones, where in fact they’re both commenting on a universal human concern.
Actually sort of amazing to me is that there are no such stories in the Pentateuch, we don’t get them until the book of Kings in the Old Testament.
An alternate view of this topic should be considered. If you do believe in Christianity, and the divine communication skills of the prophets, then it is fairly common knowledge that information about Christ has been present since the first man talked with God. Abraham knew about Him, Isaiah knew about Him, and I don’t think it’s too far of a stretch to say that all of the Old Testament prophets knew about Him. I could list off all the OT prophecies about Christ, but it would just take up space, and can be easily looked up on a myriad of other websites.
Now, consider that Abraham spent some time in Egypt (Gen 12); we know that he deceived the Pharaoh about his relationship with Sarai and was asked to leave, but was still richly rewarded when he first arrived. Riches usually equal influence. Also, consider that Joseph, after being in slavery in Egypt, rose to be the second most powerful person in the land. Then his father and his brothers and all their families came to Egypt to live. Also, a massive amount of influence.
Did these men of God share their beliefs of Christ with the pagans surrounding them? Did they share their prophecies about a virgin birth, and a God dying for the sins of the world? If so, then the question should be “Was Horus copied from Jesus?” Even if you don’t believe that Jesus was an actual person, but a myth created by the children of Israel and subsequently the early Christians, the prophecies have been around for a long time. So which came first, the Egyptian chicken or the Christian egg?
There is possibly precedent for this. I’ve read where the likely lifetime of Moses may have not occurred during the reign of Ramses II (as is often thought), but instead during the reign of Amenhotep IV, aka Akhenaten. Akhenaten (King Tut’s dad), of course, is known for ditching the Egyptian gods and instead basing the entire Egyptian kingdom around the worship of one god, which was considered radical for its time. Is it possible that the Pharaoh Akhenaten and the Egyptian prince Moses influenced each other, and were possibly even siblings?
If you read the 2 books 'Osiris And The Egyptian Rsssurection" you will note that there are many things written about Jesus that was very simular to many things said about Jesus, Osiris was called God, son of God, the Good shepard etc. Weither the writers of the New Testemant knew the stories and used them, is something to think about.There was even a Bread and Wine celebtation.
The story of Horus who was the son conceived by Isis after her husband Osiris had been ressurected by Isis help. Osiris was cut to pieces and Isis found all his parts except his penis, then she turned into a dove and hovered over Osiris and conceived Horus!So the story goes!
There is no historical proof of Moses being a real person, there is no mention of him except in the OT. Some think the Word Moses comes from the Egyptian name Tutmoses.
True enough, but many historical legends have some basis in fact. “Moses” is an Egyptian name, and it’s not hard to imagine a renegade Egyptian prince rebelling, leading an ad hoc army of formerly enslaved Hebrews, leaving/being driven out of Egypt, and losing his pursuers in a marsh or somesuch.
Exactly. Superman came back from the dead. Do we say that DC comics “stole the idea from Jesus?” No: the idea is universal. You might just as well say that DC comics “stole the idea from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,” who brought Sherlock Holmes back from the dead. There is no possible way of tracing a “genealogy” of who “stole the idea” from whom.
(C.S. Lewis, on the other hand, pretty much did steal the resurrection of Aslan from the gospels… But he knew what he was doing…)
The archologists I have read (and heard on TV) have found the houses( one could say almost a village) where the so called slaves lived and the writings on the pieces of clay(or stone) showed that the people were well paid, and were not slaves. Also one historian found that there were Israelites fighting in another country at the time.
It was also shown that it would have been impossible for any human to withstand the strength of the winds that were said to be used to blow the waters open, so the Israelites could cross. Even a very heavy man could not withstand the pressure and would not have been able to walk across. It would have meant many people crossing would have taken some time, so the winds that separated the waters would have had to keep blowing.
Why a large group of people would spend 40 years in a desert wouldn’t make sense, they could have left the desert long before that! There is also no evidence of a large group of people having lived that long in the desert, but there were many places where a few nomadic people once stayed during those years.