Joseph Campbell lives, in other words.
Anyone read Bart Ehrman’s new book on this subject? He does a pretty good job of showing why pretty much no historical scholars in relevant fields agree with the mythicist position.
Whether Jesus (or the various ancillary legends that have sprung up after his death) are derived from Horus or any other source, it does seem to me that people are missing one of the most obvious comparisons: How the Christian Cross is basically the male answer to the female Egyptian Ankh.
Huxley makes sport of this in “Brave New World”, where the new religious symbol is a “T”, after Ford’s assembly line car, easily made by lopping off the top of a cross.
Religions evolve from other forms of spirituality and religious practices. That doesn’t make them less than their predecessors. But I do think it’s useful to trace the memes from one culture to another.
Not if the Moses thing took place during Akhenaten’s reign, which was 1,000 years before. In Moses and Monotheism, Sigmund Freud speculated that Moses might have been a high priest for Aknenaten before leaving or being thrown out.
Moderator interjection: Let’s please keep this thread on Jesus/Horus. The historicity (or not) of Moses is discussed in many other threads, or you could start another one.
Now, dropping the Moderator role and just being an ordinary poster:
cuervo13: welcome to the Straight Dope Message Boards, glad to have you here. An interesting thought, that Abraham may have influenced Egyptian mythology, but hardly likely. Horus was worshipped by the Egyptians in what is called “late PreDynastic period”, roughly 3000 BC. Dating Abraham is more problematic, but different guesses have ranged from about 2000 - 1800 BC; the text of Genesis was written much later. In any cases, Horus clearly pre-dates Abraham.
The question of biblical “prophecies” or “predictions” is a whole different issue. Most of them aren’t, in fact, anything of the sort. The sayings of Isaiah are the most often distorted to imply pre-cognition, but Isaiah is roughly 800 BC. So, again, these “prophecies” were NOT “around for a long time” in comparison to the Horus myths.
This has been a commonplace since at least 1829 and probably before. The 1829 date refers to the publication of the The Diegesis: Being a Discovery of the Origin, Evidences, and Early History of Christianity by the renegade Church of England priest Robert Taylor, known as the Devil’s Chaplain. The work resulted in his imprisonment by his bishop (the preface to the book is written from Bristol Gaol).
Taylor subsequently left the Church of England and set up his own Temple in the heart of London where, dressed in eccentric robes, he gave weekly sermons.
Seen the mod order and will obey, with just one observation, that the above is wrong, Akhenaten live about 100 years before the supposed time not 1000 years.
Now back to Jesus and Horus.
The twelve disciples is one of the most spurious claims. It’s from a text that mentions twelve nocturnal gods (associated with the hours of the night) who aid Horus (and Isis and Osiris). That’s not even remotely like the actual named mortal men who were foremost among Jesus’s followers.
I definitely believe in Jesus being a historical figure whose real story became wrapped mythological motifs (ala Alexander the Great, who was undoubtedly real but it’s not so likely he was a son of Zeus or descendant of Heracles or that he was lifted into the sky by eagles or that he went to the bottom of the ocean in a bell or that his horse had the feet of beasts or other legends that grew up around him), but I don’t think he has any more in common with Horus than he does with most other deities. A freshman English student could probably compare and contrast him just as much with most other ancient gods and demigods.
That isn’t “contrary to the article”. The very next sentence after the one suggesting that Bill Maher may have taken that notion from Tom Harpur says,
I, too, would like to see some investigation of similarities between the stories of in the bible and those in other religions by someone without an axe to grind, or at least with a smaller axe to grind.
To suggest that Matthew, for example, may have been making some stuff up in his account of the birth of Jesus that is corroborated by none of the other apostles, seems to contradict historical fact, and conveniently fits into prophecies about the coming of the messiah is NOT to deny the existence of God.
Similarly, to suggest that there may have been an actual teaching philosopher whose teachings became the foundation of Christianity is NOT to insist upon the existence of God.
I realize that the biased jerks trying to use this issue to club people with their agenda probably aren’t readers here at The Straight Dope, but I’d like to address them anyway, via sort of an open-letter:
If you have to fabricate evidence to prove your point, then you have already lost. If there is real evidence that proves your point, your lying damages its credibility. Search instead for the Truth, whatever it may be.
Actually, yes.
Not that so much, but folks often say that Superman’s origin was clearly lifted from Moses. 
Not sure the relevance of all this, but …
So we assume that any reference to wind is just how people at the time thought it was done.
The description seems to match a tsunami pretty well. The water went away, allowing the Israelites time to cross, and returned violently, thwarting their pursuers.
Well, Exodus in particular seems to have some translation issues around the word “year”.
Ah, but how much do we know about what was believed about Horus in 3000BC?
Stories change all the time.
Just as an example, let’s just say I write a story about King Arthur in which I say Excalibur was a glowing blue sword made of energy, and that Mordred had one just like it but red. This story becomes so popular that 500 years from now everyone just includes it as part of the King Arthur tales. 1000 years after that, some scholar wonders aloud “do you think maybe they lifted that from Star Wars?”
When his colleague points out that the King Arthur myths predate Star Wars by at least a millennium, that’s not relevant. Especially if the only copies of the Arthurian Legends they have were written after 2600AD. They’d show the energy swords, but not the fact that they got added long after the stories were written.
Put another way: we’re willing to consider that the Disciples, or people who came after them, may have changed the story of Jesus to include elements of another popular religion, but we are dismissing the idea that the Egyptians did the same to Horus?
Such as?
Mod Comment: Please, gang, I’ve already asked that Exodus and Moses be kept OUT of this thread, let’s stick to Jesus and Horus…
Poster comment: It’s not “years” that’s in doubt, it’s that the number 40 in the bible (including New Testament) is a number that means Change (Capital C) – change in the world, change in history, generational change. Thus, 40 days of Flood, Moses is on Mountain for 40 days (and comes back with Laws that change the course of history), Israelites wander in desert for 40 years and it’s a new generation, most of the judges are 40-years-later, Jesus goes into the wilderness for 40 days, etc. Thus, the appearance of 40 in the bible may not mean literal time elapse, it’s more allegoric/metaphoric. (What’s a meta for?)
There are some striking resemblances between the characteristics of many savior gods.
Horus and Jesus do have some correspondences, but so do Jesus and Tammuz as well as Jesus and Osiris.
We do know that there were many ‘mystery’ religions in circulation at the time traditionally associated with the life of Jesus. It is entirely possible that one or more elements of one or more of these religions could have been used to construct the religion that eventually grew into Christianity.
It is not surprising that most Christians tend to ignore the roots of their religion. It is much easier to pretend that the other religions were something qualitatively different from their own chosen faith. As in, those pagans sure were crazy with all of their fertility rites and symbolic resurrections.
I read it - he pretty much tediously proved (in his own mind at least) that there must have been a person named Jesus of Nazereth, who forsaw and preached about the imminent coming of the Kingdom of God, by which he meant that, within a few years, decades at most, the Jews of Palestine would administer their own affairs according to their religious principles, rather than being dominated and oppressed by Roman occupiers. For this Jesus was considered by some Jewish people to be a savior or “Christ”, and also for this he was killed by the Romans.
Ehrman did not prove any of the more fantastic things that are attributed to Jesus Christ - i.e. the miracles.
In his earlier works Bart Ehrman does point out that some of the things written in the scriptures were probably concocted to “prove” that Jesus fulfilled prophesy - for example the story of Mary and Joseph having to travel to Bethlehem because they had to be counted in a census - Such a census almost certainly did not happen. The author of the gospel made it up because he felt it was important that Jesus fulfill the prophesy that the messiah be born in Bethlehem, even though Jesus was known to be from Nazareth.
Many of the miracles attributed to Jesus were standard fare for divine beings in the legends of the time, so of course when Jesus was promoted from mere human to Son of God, he must have done them too. Remember there were no cameras, no tape recorders, no printing presses, and most people could not write or read. When you are out proselytizing under such circumstances, you might just stretch the truth a bit to get your point across.
And a few simple card tricks would have entertained and impressed the multitudes something fierce.
The Pseudepigrapha has at least 3 books credited to Moses. I’m not claiming any degree of accuracy to the historic events portrayed therein, however, it appears there was at the least a strong oral tradition with respect to Moses. Typically, that much smoke means there was some fire somewhere.
A tsunami doesn’t separate the waters, it covers all areas of land. The OT suggests(at least) that the waters parted and made like a wall.
The people who did the experiment Just used a huge fan that created a hundred a mile or so wind. It did part the waters, but the wind would have to remain steady for quite some time. Now, of course if God could do all things, then of course he could have parted the waters with out wind.
Why God chose to kill a lot of people who were also his children has me baffled. And knew ahead of time that his people were going to be slaves etc. just doesn’t ring true to me that the Abrahamic God was a good father or a loving being!
Just before the first big wave of a tsunami, if you are near the shore, the water recedes, which tends to mislead those who are about to become victims. If we allow a little artistic license with the biblical account, this receding might have allowed the first party to cross over now dry land, but the second party to be inundated. Certainly the deluge could be described as an advancing wall of water.
Not that that’s what I think happened. It’s more likely a total myth.